


Wait But Don't Ask

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Pregnancy, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 62,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25089955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: Jon considered asking Sansa out, but she beats him to the punch with an even bigger question, putting on hold any possibility of something more between them.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 509
Kudos: 1212





	1. I'm Done Waiting

“I think this will be my last craft show,” Sansa says, as Jon sets the last bag he’s carried in from his truck down in the middle of her living room.

The place is half jungle with plants creeping over the window and all around the perimeter on stands of varying heights. He has no idea how she manages to keep so many plants alive, but that’s Sansa. Every inch of her place is alive. Either with plants or art or some luxe looking textile in colors he wouldn’t have guessed could be put together and end up looking like this, and of course, a lot of the things she’s made. The effect is overtly feminine and wildly different from Jon’s place. He likes it. Wouldn't have guessed he'd like it, but then, when Sansa came back from college, a lot of things about her surprised him.

She changed, yes, but his perception of her changed too.

He straightens up, blowing air up through his hair, which has fallen into his face. “You’re not going to stop making your pillows, are you?”

Right now, she makes pillows. He's no expert, but they're really nice. Velvet mostly. Sometimes linen. Round thick pleated discs, balls, shells or fans in every color under the rainbow. Some of them so big you can sit on them. Which is why Jon got tapped to drive her stuff in his truck to the shows, since she doesn’t have a car.

Not tapped. She requested his help months ago, giving him ample opportunities to decline without feeling bad about it. But, he doesn’t mind. He likes spending the weekends driving her to farmer’s markets and high schools. Sometimes, instead of coming back for her, he sits in the booth all day, reading news on his phone, while she crochets.

That was her last thing: crocheted baby blankets. Easier to transport to some degree, but he didn’t drive her to shows back then. That's when he was with Dany, and his ex didn’t get along with the Starks. Not one of them. Although, to be fair, they didn’t make much of an effort with her.

 _Your friends are weirdly possessive of you, you know. It isn’t normal_.

She meant Arya. Arya is weirdly possessive of him. Sansa and Jon have never been close enough that anyone would accuse her of anything in regards to him, much less being jealous of his time or attention.

Sansa pads from the all-white kitchen, feet already slipped out of her sandals, holding out a glass of ice water. Her toenails are bubblegum pink. He noticed in the booth, as she bobbed her foot up and down, waiting for someone to come by.

Details. Sansa is all about details. Like the slice of lemon she put in his water. Just like they do in restaurants.

Unlike any restaurant he’s ever eaten at, however, her water glasses are strawberry pattern. Vintage probably. She loves that kind of stuff. He stopped a couple of times at antique malls they passed on the way to a show, knowing she wanted to and didn't want to actually say, so as not to impose. Because, she's thoughtful too and overly careful not to take up too much space.

He and Robb have suspicions about that guy she was dating and where some of these tendencies started. He just had that look about it. Weasel faced.

“Thanks,” he says, taking it from her with a nod.

“No, I’ll keep making pillows, but the booths are expensive. I don’t always make back what I paid to rent them. I mean, today wasn’t great.”

He had no idea the slots were expensive. It’s not like anyone there looks like they’re made of money. How can you be when you're selling recycled crayons like his mom used to make from all the broken pieces at the preschool in tart tins in the oven?

“Oh,” Jon says on a swallow.

He tips the glass and the ice clacks together. Several large gulps and he’s drained half the glass. The pillows aren’t heavy, but it’s really hot out and the gymnasium they were in today was muggy as hell. Bad air flow. The lighting was weird too. Sansa said it wasn’t showing off her pillows to their best effect.

“More?” she asks, extending her hand again.

“Thanks,” he says, wiping his upper lip with the side of his hand, as she smiles that smile at him that makes his chest feel full.

That feeling was a real shock too, when it first hit him.

“I’m having better luck on Etsy actually,” she says over her shoulder.

“Yeah?” he says, following her into the kitchen.

“It’s crazy. I end up walking to the post office twice a week with orders,” she says, as he leans into her counter, watching her fill his glass up again.

“Do you need help? Getting them there?”

Packages of giant pillows have to be unwieldy. There’s no way she could load a bunch of them in her bike basket.

She smiles again, handing him the refilled glass. “Careful. You’re supposed to be off the hook without the shows. No more hauling my stuff around? Your weekends your own again?”

He hums, sipping a little more slowly this time.

Running her fingers along the strap of her floral sundress, she tips her head to the side. “You can go fishing with Robb instead of sitting on a folding chair all day with me. That’s got to sound better, right?”

Not entirely. Robb’s busy with Jeyne these days anyway.

“It’s not trout season.”

“Oh. Well, whatever you guys do when I’m not taking up all your time,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Go ahead and make your plans. That was my last reserved table for the season. I got lucky. An influencer posted a picture of her bed all done up with my pillows. It made my store go crazy.”

He places the glass on the counter. “One of those Twitter people?”

“Instagram, but yeah, one of those. I can hardly keep up with the orders. I’ve got a waitlist.”

“That’s great, Sans.”

She smiles again. Toothy. Wrinkling around her eyes. It wasn’t so long ago she didn’t smile like that anymore.

“You gonna give up your day job?”

She gives a little shake of her head. “Are you kidding? I need the health insurance.”

Her boss would probably lose her mind if Sansa quit. As organized as Sansa is, Jon doesn't doubt she’s the best executive assistant in the city.

“Yeah. That’s the dream though, right? A bunch of goats, a garden, and no nine to five.”

She bites her lower lip. “You’re half way there, Jon. King of your castle out there.”

Which is mostly true. He’s working for himself now and his place is big enough that he could do the whole chickens and goats thing like they had growing up on sprawled out on Winterfell Lane. The Starks on the big farm and he and his mom in the little house Mr. Stark rented to them.

“Thank you by the way,” she says with a quick pet of his bicep, “for helping me out.”

He has a weird fleeting thought about how he wasn't flexing.

“You’re too nice to say it, but I know there are other things you totally would have rather been doing than hanging out at craft fairs. I know that's not your scene.”

She always thanks him, but she has a way of saying it—something about her tone or the soft look in her face—that makes you feel the full weight of it. She’s one of those people who can make you feel like the most important person in the room just by looking in your eyes while you talk. A couple of drinks and that quality ends up being a real damn turn-on.

But he’s not the best company for someone like Sansa, so she probably won’t really miss their long drives to shows and random talks. It’ll go back to the way it was, seeing her at group dinners every couple of months, unless she has plans.

“Well,” he rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll get out your way.”

“I’ll walk you to your truck. Let me grab my sandals.”

Sansa’s first floor apartment is on the residential edge of midtown, where trees line the streets and you can’t hear the traffic, but she only has to walk two blocks to get to the best restaurants and coffee shops and every medical office in town. She can get away with not having a car, living here. She even bikes to work.

The humidity hits him in the face as thick as soup with a push of her door. His truck will already be hot as shit, which is why he left the windows down. Sansa says he’s asking for it to be stolen. The clutch is tricky, so good luck to the thief who tries. Almost no one can drive a manual anyway.

“Hey, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” she says, as he reaches through the window and pulls the lock up. “Just real quick,” she says, waving him on, when he turns towards her. “I don’t want to stop you.”

“Okay.”

“Are you going to get in your car?” she asks, fooling with that same strap again.

He jerks his thumb to the side. “You… want me to get in? Now?”

Her eyes dart away from him. “Yep.”

“Okay.” He frowns, swinging the door wider, as she steps back enough not to be hit. The door thuds as he closes it behind himself and squares his hands up on the wheel. “What’s up?”

She leans into the truck, hands curling over the open window. “I’m done waiting around for a good guy. That’s not happening. I attract jerks.”

He looks from her eyes to her mouth and to the strap that’s slipping off her shoulder, then straight out the windshield. He drums his fingers.

He’s thought about asking her out. But they’ve known each other their whole lives. Something would have already happened if she had any interest, so he’d only make things awkward by asking. And if she said yes and it didn’t work out? That would be a goddamn mess.

“So, I’m going for it on my own. I’m going to try to have a baby. It's what I always wanted, you know?”

His mouth goes slack, as he twists in the seat towards her.

“Yeah. So.” She mirrors him, drumming her fingers on the door, as her eyebrows arch high. “It’s a lot.”

“Sorry. Um.” He lets go of the wheel and pushes his hair back with both hands. “You caught me off guard.”

“That’s—”

“That’s great,” he says, talking over her accidentally. “Sorry.” He grimaces. “That’s really great. Really, um... I think that’s um really great. Sorry. Shit.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. He exhales hard. There are a million things running through his mind all at once. Mostly, total bewilderment over the fact that she’s even telling him this. Of all the fucking people she could confide in? Jon should be the last person.

Given his reaction, she’s probably regretting her decision.

“Yeah, so,” she rocks back from the car, hands pulling back to cross over her chest. “I’ll need a donor or whatever? And I wanted to ask you. But if you’re not up for that, we can just never talk about it again.”

“Up for that?”

“Bad choice of words?” she says, wrinkling her nose.

It would be cute any other time. His stomach normally swoops when she teases him like that.

But Jon can’t laugh.

His heart has stopped.

“I mean, I've obviously thought about it a lot, but I'm just springing this on you. Really, no pressure.”

Just the idea that she's sat around thinking about asking him to _do that_ makes him want to bury his head in the steering wheel. He's fucking hallucinating. This is some fever dream.

“I could ask Theon right?”

“Fuck.” He scrubs his mouth. “Don’t do that. That’s a terrible idea.”

“Yikes,” she says with a tight smile. She looks down and steps back another foot up onto the curb, farther away from his window. “Bad joke, right? Can you imagine?”

He doesn’t want to.

 _Theon Greyjoy_.

“Okay,” she says, lifting her one hand in a wave. “This is awkward, I know. Just… let me know or not if you want to ignore I ever said anything. Thanks for your help today,” she says one more time, before putting her back to him and hurrying towards her door, the skirt of her dress whipping around her legs.

He squeezes his eyes shut, buries his head in the wheel, and misses her disappearing inside.


	2. Hurry Up and Wait

_Are you around?_

_At home?_

_Yeah_

_Can I stop by?_

Three blinking dots will pop up, disappear, and reappear three times on Jon's phone, while Sansa tries to work out a response. The right response. With this thing hanging between them, she doesn’t think she’s up for some casual drop by. Even if it’s just that he wants to drop something off Arya gave him for her or something like that. The usual reasons they move through each other’s orbit unexpectedly like space debris. And yet, it would be super unfair to shut him out, when he never asked for any of this.

She finally settles on just asking upfront, so she knows how to prepare herself. She'll have to get over it eventually, when he turns her down, because it isn't like he's going anywhere.

_Are we pretending I never asked?_

_It’s ok if we are_

_No_

_Ok_

_I’m literally a block away_

She glances down at herself. A satin romper is not a big brother’s best friend late night hang session thing to wear. She’d feel fidgety talking about him potentially being the donor in something so flimsy.

_Give me a sec. In my pjs_

She selects a bunch of emojis from her most recent selection. Cute ones, because that's what she typically uses just like her youngest brother finds a way to work the poop emoji into every text conversation they have. Three cute smiles in a row and a heart. Her finger presses the green arrow, sending them at the same time a stab of regret hits her. Was that flirty? Sometimes she gets too flirty with Jon, because he’s safe and cute and she likes how it makes her feel to test him.

“Too late,” she says out loud to the empty room, as she grabs the remote, turns off Netflix, and tosses the remote back down on the rosy velvet cushion of her sofa.

It's just a bunch of stupid emojis. If he’s really a block away, she doesn’t have time to curl up on the sofa and worry about how a text came across to him. Or plan the perfect outfit for discussing artificial insemination.

Unfurling her legs, she stands up and hurries to her bedroom to find something decent to throw on before she hears his truck out front and she’s stuck entertaining him in her new satin pjs, while he delivers the bad news.

Would bad news be delivered in person like this? Is only good news given in person?

She’s been expecting bad news. He looked so shell-shocked when she asked. His gut reaction was to say no, she could tell, and that’s totally fair if soul-crushingly disappointing. She can’t act like she’s broken by the news if he intends to tell her no tonight. She’ll have to act understanding. Fix her face. For Jon’s sake and to preserve some dignity.

It wasn’t easy asking, but accepting his answer in the negative will be even harder. She doesn't really expose herself like that anymore. Every time she has, she got burned.

Her hands shake, as she pulls her head through the neck of the black and white striped t-shirt dress she wore today and hasn’t bothered to fold back up yet to put away, when he knocks on the door. It's a solid knock, and if she stands here with her hair stuck under the back of her dress, she'll end up trying to figure out what a healthy knock like that means about what he has to say. So, she propels herself forward over the hooked rug she made a couple of crafting phases ago.

She doesn’t let her face betray her anxiety, when she greets him with a one-armed hug. He feels really warm under the press of her hand, looks a little spooked too with his hand in his pocket, jostling his keys. He’s slow to respond and only gets his hand out and his arm up to pull her in closer as she’s already pulling away. They’d do a strange dance if she went back in again, so she rocks back on her bare feet and waves him through the door, pretending as if they didn’t just suffer some awkward timing.

“Do you want me to get you a beer or something? Or is that entrapment? I don’t know the conduct rules on this kind of thing,” she says, as he pushes the door shut.

His hand is immediately back in his pocket, jostling his keys again before he can respond. “If you don’t know what the right thing to do is, there are no rules, I’m guessing.”

“Would you know,” she says in her chirpiest, most non-threatening voice, “Emily Post doesn’t say a word on it.”

“Figures,” he says, tilting his head to the side, as if to look around her. “Did that landlord of yours not send someone about the cabinet front yet?”

She has her methods of deflecting, Jon has his.

“No. I keep calling.”

“What an asshole.”

Jon told her he’d fix the thing for her a couple of weeks ago, when he noticed it hanging, but she swore the landlord was sending a guy. Her landlord, however, is totally useless at anything other than collecting rent. Which is sky high. It’s all about the location in this case, not paying a premium for a responsive landlord. This wouldn’t be the first time in the past few months Jon jumped in to fix something, when she failed to get a response from Petyr Baelish or his assistant.

“Get me your tool bucket and I’ll grab a beer. You want one?” he asks, as she heads off, one hand pulling her hair up and off her neck as she goes to retrieve the tool bucket gifted to her by her father upon moving into her own place.

It’s such a dad gift. Sansa was not thrilled to receive it or the helpful lecture on the importance of maintence. She knew she’d never use it. Actually, the only person who has ever used it is Jon. He would be the kind of son who would be thrilled with a tool bucket caddie.

Maybe her dad gave him one. Jon’s been on his own since he was eighteen or nineteen, but Sansa wasn’t exactly focused on what was going on with him at the time, so there’s no way of telling. It is the kind of thing her dad would think to do for Jon though, considering.

“Sure,” she calls out. “Back of the frig,” she adds.

She doesn’t sit around drinking beer by herself, which is why the six pack has gotten pushed to the back. She doesn’t bother with wine here at home either. She’s not a big drinker. A cup of tea is more her thing. Lemonade if she's watching a movie and feeling indulgent. But by sheer happy coincidence, the beer will be extra cold from being back there, and as hot as it is even with the sun down, that sounds pretty good. Might help with her nerves too.

She has to heft the bucket with two hands and it makes her walk funny, as she hauls it back from the utility closet to the kitchen. He meets her halfway, beer bottle in one hand, grabbing the bucket from her with the other. The tendons in his arm stand out, but he doesn’t have any trouble lifting it over the counter and lowering it down before the messed up cabinet.

Jon isn’t one of those self-obsessed gym rats, but he’s strong, and he looks good in a t-shirt and jeans. He looks good tonight, as he straightens up and grabs for the second beer bottle, already starting to sweat on the counter. He twists it opens with the meat of his palm and holds it out to her.

“You shouldn’t have to fix this. Mr. Baelish should handle it.”

Her apartment looks nice, which is why she chose it from all the places she looked at, but there’s some serious craftsmanship issues. Nothing she picked up on when renting the place, but being a furniture maker, it drives Jon a little nuts. He says they cut corners updating this place.

“Didn't you say he gives you the creeps?”

“He does a little.”

“Then, I’ll handle it, save you calling him again. I would have fixed it last time if you’d let me.”

“Is the beer okay?” she asks, bringing it up to her nose. “It’s not… what do you call it? It’s been in there awhile.”

“Skunky?” he asks, crouching down by the bucket.

He thinks she doesn’t catch it, but he smiles into the bucket, as he starts to rummage around for something one-handed. Something about her question amused him.

His hand pushes things to side, causing a minor avalanche inside. The bucket is disorganized, unlike the rest of her apartment, because she has no idea how to properly arrange its contents.

“Right,” she says, giving the bottle a little sniff. “Kind of a menacing description of old beer—skunky.”

“Yeah, but the beer’s fine. You’re safe.”

Leaning against the counter, she crosses one foot over the other, and Jon pauses in his search. He stares somewhere south of her knees long enough for her to bring the beer to her lips and tip it up, wondering what the hell is so mesmerizing about a couple of feet in need of a pedicure.

She’s good at reading people, but sometimes, despite being so very familiar, Jon is a mystery to her.

“Sans, stop me if you’ve changed your mind about asking me,” he says, setting his beer down on the slate floor and grabbing for the screwdriver tucked in one of the caddie’s pockets. “But I’ve got some questions.”

Her heart starts to beat faster. Once she decided to ask him, she imagined him saying yes but never really let herself believe it. That he even has questions to ask feels like a step towards a yes rather than an outright no.

It's scary and thrilling. A possibility opening up before her. Like standing on the ledge of something and looking out over the world from above.

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

There’s no one else she can picture asking. She’s been thinking about it for months. Sitting next to him in the car, in craft fair booths, tracing the outline of his face and listening to the rumble of his voice, taking note of how quick he is to offer to help, how generous he is with his time, how decent, how he treats everybody with respect. She knew in her heart she wanted it to be him. He’s the best guy she knows.

The idea of selecting someone from some kind of glossy catalog strikes her as impersonal in a way she’s just not comfortable with, when it comes to something this big. The men in those things have already given tacit permission. They've made their donation. But how would she know that what was on the page was reality? That it wasn’t a hoax being perpetrated on her from afar. She has been tricked by men before. More than once.

She trusts Jon, and she’d have to before entertaining the idea of surrendering any power to him.

He nods his head a couple of times, brows furrowed.

She used to think he’d be good looking if he just smiled more. Broody wasn’t her type.

“Okay, so, hit me with the logistics of this,” he says, opening the cabinet farther and pulling it up from the angle it’s been hanging at for weeks.

He frowns harder at the bent hinge like he’s angry with it. He presses his thumb into it, flattening it mostly back in place.

She drags her lower lip through her teeth. “Logistics? You want to know how you’d do a donation?”

He freezes, screwdriver in hand. “I have the gist of the mechanics.”

A puff of a laugh escapes, which she tries to hide against the mouth of her beer.

Nerves. Granted, it is a weird situation. Intimate without being intimate. Because on his end and on hers there will have to be the miming of sex. But there are cups and syringes and closed doors between them too. And then a baby that at least in its DNA will be half her and half him.

Part of her just wants to demand he hurry up and tell her yes or no to end the torture.

She takes another, larger swallow of beer and wrinkles her nose at the taste of it lingering on her tongue. It might not be skunky, but it’s still not her favorite thing in the world.

She looks down at the crown of Jon’s head, angling down and then back up, as he fiddles with the screw. He feels far away down there on the floor. Too far to be having this discussion. She slides down the bank of cabinets, crouching on the floor beside him with her arms folded over her knees.

That spooked look appears on his face again and he fumbles and drops the screw he’s holding. It rolls across the floor towards her, but he snatches it back before she can scoop it up.

“What do you want to know then?” she asks, as he recovers control over the screw and places it against the cabinet.

“Donor means what exactly to you? What is my role in all this?” he asks, adjusting his hold on the screwdriver without glancing over at her.

His body is tense. She can make out the bunch of his muscles in his back beneath his grey t-shirt. She hates seeing people in distress. Dislikes being the cause of it even more. But if she scooted over to run a hand down his back, she doesn’t think that would chill him out.

Closing one eye, she looks down into the neck of the beer bottle. “I’d do it on my own, Jon, the parenting stuff. I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

It would mess up his life to ask him to co-parent on some level. It would make it harder for him to find a girlfriend, complicate things with a wife. It would tie him down.

One day, Jon will be a fantastic dad and a great husband to some lucky girl, but she can’t dwell on that. Everyone has their own path.

“Uh huh,” he says, twisting the screwdriver. “I feel like I should mention, I didn’t have a dad, Sans.”

She presses her lips together tight and clears her throat. “Yeah. I’m really not trying to be insensitive about that.”

He finally looks sidelong at her, still turning the screwdriver.

He might as well have pinned her to the cabinets, she feels so fixed in place by the weight of his stare.

“I mean, I know you didn’t have a dad, Jon. Are you trying to tell me you’re deeply disturbed and I shouldn’t do this?” she asks, trying for light and breezy to defuse the tension.

“No. I don’t know though. Do I seem fucked up to you?”

“No,” she says, stretching her legs out to sit flat. Light and breezy is out. She toes his hip with her foot and gives him an apologetic smile. “I know it was hard for your mom though. I mean, I don’t _know_ know. I can’t obviously, but I remember stuff. I’ve really thought about it. All of it. I swear I’ve considered being a single mom and my kid not having a dad, and you’re great, you know? Your mom did a great job without a man.”

“She’d appreciate you saying that. It wasn’t the scenario she was hoping for though, when she had me.”

“Right,” Sansa says, though she doesn’t know what Lyanna’s personal situation was. It kind of makes her heart ache to think Jon knows his mom wasn’t happy about it. “You think it’d be a mistake?”

She shouldn’t care what anyone thinks, but she doesn’t want him to judge her choice even if he can’t bring himself to help her. He said he thought it was great, but he was grasping at straws, when she sprung the whole thing on him.

“No, but I’m going to feel a way about it, Sans, since I didn’t have a dad. I’ve made promises to myself, I guess.” He squints, swinging the cabinet slightly back and forth. “But I know you don’t do anything without thinking it through. You’ve probably got some plan in place. Surrogate father figures in mind.”

Jon sees her. Better than maybe her siblings do.

“I do actually.”

Jon, for one, if he doesn't feel like he's already done more than enough.

“You’ve got your dad obviously. He was mine. I still think of him as a father.”

“Right,” she says, barely getting the word out with him giving her that puppy dog pleading look.

“I’ve been thinking about how this would work too. I want to help, but—”

She holds her breath.

“To be clear, how is this going to… I don’t know, sit with your family? My being the donor? They’re family to me too, I don’t want to make waves, and I can’t picture your mom being thrilled to be honest.”

He sits back, back thudding against a white cabinet, and she realizes her wonky cabinet front isn’t hanging askew anymore.

She points with her beer. “Was that it? It’s fixed?”

“Yep. Easy fix. You could do it,” he says, picking up his beer. “I could teach you.”

“Thank you,” she says, reaching out to tap his bottle with hers. “You’re the best handy man a girl could ask for.”

He gives her that uncomfortable flat smile of his.

And he’s right to be uneasy with the situation: her mom wouldn’t be thrilled to have Jon father either of her girls’ babies. Her mom has bigger plans for Arya and Sansa. Grander plans than getting knocked up by the boy down the road, who didn’t bother with a college degree and went into a trade. She never did like how much Sansa's dad helped out Jon’s mom, so the strain there goes back a way. She won’t be thrilled with Sansa’s lie either—anonymous donor—but it’s a lie that will spare Jon and Sansa some unwanted interference in their lives.

“So, yeah.” She taps a short nail against the bottle. “My family wouldn’t know about it being you.”

His face screws up. “What?”

“I mean, we could decide, when the baby is older to tell them if that’s what you want and they’re curious about where they come from.” She’s read a lot about it, scrolling through one internet site after another about adoption and IVF babies. Some kids are curious and need to know. Some never show any interest. It’s not personal is the important point. No reflection on the job the adoptive or single parent and the job they’ve done. “But, no, I’d just tell my family I went to the sperm bank.”

There would be endless questions if she told the truth. _Why_ Jon? And she doesn’t exactly have the right words for what makes him the right choice. Maybe someday she’ll have to explain it to her child, but she’s not ready to be interrogated by Arya or Robb about it. They’d act like she was being selfish, stealing something from the group.

She takes another sip from the bottle and chases a stray drop on her lower lip with her tongue. “Everyone would be weird about it if they knew, and it’s none of their business.”

And any resemblance to Jon Snow? Under those supposedly anonymous circumstances, no one would think to comment. Genetics are weird!

It might be more convenient for the baby to look like her. Still, she’s pictured it, a little boy with Jon’s pretty excellent hair, those unusual grey eyes, the full shape of his mouth.

“Wow.” His throat rolls above his t-shirt. “That’s a big fucking secret to keep.”

“I’m good with secrets.”

He roughs his hand up and down over the thigh of his jeans, looks sideways away from her and back. “And if I’m not?”

She looks back down at her lap and crosses her feet at the ankle. “I’d love for you to be a godparent. I think that would be good. You could be involved then however much you like,” she offers. She swallows hard, trying to slow her words. “We could skip that though if that’s too much, considering. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I’ll sign something, saying you don’t owe us anything, money or whatever. Um. Whatever you need.”

_Do not cry. Do not cry._

His hand closes around her ankle, and she locks eyes with him. “Sans, that’s not… I’d never ask you to sign something like that.”

“Okay.”

His thumb arcs over her anklebone, sending goosebumps up her calf.

“I’ll do whatever though. It wouldn't be a dumb thing to have me do. I’ve just always wanted to be a mom, Jon.”

“I know.”

His thumb moves over her again and then his hand is gone, pulled back in his lap, and she can breathe again properly.

“So, if I just keep waiting for the right time, I’m worried I’ll make a bad choice again with a guy, because I’m trying to go through all the right steps to get the happy ending.” Marry some loser, who shows passing interest in her, so she can end up in the house with the two point five kids and a dog. It’s not 1950 and she doesn’t have to do it that way. She can take control of her life. “I’m going to do it on my own.”

“You’d make a great mom. Everyone knows that.”

“Thanks.”

He scrubs his face and rocks his head up against the cabinet. “I’m flattered. Obviously.”

Here it comes, she thinks. “But?”

His chest expands, stretching his t-shirt. He exhales. “No but. What do I do, go to some clinic?”

She blinks back at him, glances down at the beer in her hand, and sets it on the dark tile. “Is that a yes?”

“Well, I’ll need an address, but yes.”

She smiles, covers her face with her hands, and then runs them down her neck. “Oh my God, Jon. Give me a sec. Okay, so this is the embarrassing part.”

“Wait,” he says, lifting his beer. “We haven’t gotten to the embarrassing part yet?”

“Sort of. Going through a clinic can get expensive if it doesn’t work the first time,” she says, stopping as he chokes on a swallow of beer and beats his chest with his fist. “Which it doesn’t always,” she starts again, “and I need to save for the baby, which will be expensive.”

She feels lightheaded. Like there’s a bubble in her chest ready to pop, but a dark blush is spreading up Jon’s neck and cheeks as she babbles. It takes her a second with her brain tripping along towards the endgame she didn't let herself truly believe in. A second to look at him and grasp what he heard her say.

Not going through a clinic does not mean she’s asking him to carry her into the bedroom and do the thing.

Jon’s appreciation of her is purely academic as far as she can tell. He notices her. She can push him into being a little touchy-feely with some encouragement, when he’s had a few drinks. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, she could probably pry a kiss out of him. But he has no actual interest in her. They're not headed to a bedroom in this lifetime.

“Uh, there are kits. People call it the turkey baster method? Which is embarrassing. It’s not quite that. You’d still be doing the same thing on your end is the important thing.”

She should have led with that.

She laughs again, a giddy hiccup, and covers her mouth, trying to hold it in.

“Oh shit. Turkey baster. Okay.”

“Not tonight of course,” she says, grinning behind her hand.

He laughs, hard enough to collapse his shoulders, and the sound of it is so reassuring, her shoulders drop a good inch too.

“Okay. Good to know.”

“There’s a timing element to this,” she says, dropping her hand into her lap.

“I don’t think I’d be up for my part anyway.”

“Oh my God, Jon. Stop.”

She kicks her foot out and nudges his leg to no effect. He doesn’t budge.

“It was your joke. You asked me to be a sperm donor out by the curb and then made jokes, in case you’ve forgotten.”

She knows she’s as red as he is. “Yeah, I did.”

“Okay,” he says, scrubbing his face again. “We’ll do it. I’ll do it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”


	3. I've Misread This

Jon kills the engine and sits for a second, hands on the wheel, watching the front window of Sansa’s apartment. The lights are on, but there's no sign of movement inside. She’ll be in there though. She said she would be. Maybe sitting on her sofa, feet pulled up under her. Maybe working on pillows at her sewing machine. She was saving for a new one, but that could be on hold now with different things to save for.

He could buy it for her. She’s not looking for financial support—she’s not looking for a whole lot from him, actually, unless you count godparent as a big thing—but it’d be a gift. Kind of a big gift from a friend. It might be too much, considering. The whole I’m the father of your baby or the donor, but we’re going to pretend that’s not the case, has complicated Christmas gifting. What's the right gift to give under the circumstances? Another thing Jon never thought to consider.

There are endless complications. Standing in the shower with his arm braced against the tile and the water pounding his back, he can come up with a fresh dozen—easily. Sitting here in an increasingly muggy car, he could find three things to worry about without trying, but this isn’t about him. There’s certainly no them. It’s about her, and he signed on knowing that.

He slides his hands down the wheel. He’s got to text her he’s here, so he doesn’t chicken out. He reaches over for his phone on the passenger seat. That seat became her spot, occupied on weekend craft show drives. The farthest one they went to was in southern Illinois. She picked the radio station and sang pop songs half the way there. He hadn’t heard her sing since they were in high school. She's always had a pretty voice. Jon likes classic country, because that’s what his mom raised him on, but if Sansa is the one singing, he doesn’t much mind what the genre is.

The last text is from her. More often than not, of late, she's the last person to have sent him a text, being the chattiest of his contacts. This one was the big one, letting him know she was ready when he was, which is why he has an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack sitting on the passenger side floorboard. There’s an ideal time to do this. Apparently that can be determined nowadays with apps and sticks with digital readers. Everything about this arrangement is modern. Works from a mechanical standpoint from this point on, however, mostly the same as if they were doing this the old-fashioned way.

Which they’re not.

This is a strict hand over of the goods situation. And yet, to achieve this embarrassing specimen, thinking about a lunch bag and a football style hand-off wasn’t going to get the job done.

He could have thought about anything. Some generic fantasy filmstrip mentally curated for his taste. That’s the usual thing. If the general failed, he could have moved on to the specific. Tangible experiences he’s had with Ygritte, Dany, or Alys, who he didn’t introduce to the Starks after they were not the friendliest with Dany.

But he thought about her. Her lips. Pressing his hand into the small of her back. Tipping her head back with the press of his thumb. Hitching her thigh up. The way she might say his name.

 _Fuck_.

Porn would have been a better choice. Impersonal. He’s a guy in a sperm donor catalog, except she picked him from her contact list for reasons he doesn’t entirely understand.

He is flattered by it. Deeply fucking touched, actually. Which only makes it harder, because it makes him feel things towards her that are totally out of bounds.

She clearly doesn’t want a partner in this. Co-parenting isn’t on the table; she made that clear. Acted like it would be a big relief to him. Which at thirty? And single? It probably should be. But it’s not.

The kid will be fine. More than fine. The baby will have a great mom. And as for a dad? Mr. Stark was a great stand-in for for him, when he needed one, and there’s Robb and even her younger brothers, who are practically grown now.

But he promised himself he wouldn’t do what his dad did, walking out on his mom, when she found out he lied and was married. He would never do that to a kid, leave them without a dad.

He doesn’t have to be absent if he wants to be a godparent and her friend. That’s his lane.

 _Fucking stay in it, Snow_.

The last thing Sansa needs is some mopey donor, making her feel bad because of his hang-ups, after she thought he’d be the right one for the job.

Someone pulls up behind him, blinding him for a second with the car’s halogen headlights. He squints up at the rear-view: it’s a nice car. When the lights dim and his vision clears, he can make out that it’s a middle-aged guy behind the wheel, dark hair, grey at the temples.

Jon knows the other cars on the street. Knows the neighbors to some degree. He doesn’t recognize the car or the guy.

This stranger gets out, adjusts his suit coat, and even in the fading light, Jon can see he’s dressed nice too. Suit’s a little splashy, shoes too nice even for the financial district here in town, where most of the guys pulling in six figures still have no style. He looks like he’s trying for New York City in the middle of America.

The guy walks past Jon’s truck, crosses over the grassy strip between the street and Sansa’s apartment and starts to head up her sidewalk with his hand in his pocket.

Jon rocks to the side, slipping his phone into his back pocket, grabs his door handle, and pulls. “Hey,” he calls out over the hood of his truck.

He’s short. Impeccably groomed though. The suit is tailored really well, which helps disguise the fact that he’s probably shorter than Sansa.

“Can I help you?” Jon asks.

“Can _I_ help you?” the guy asks, turning on the heel of his fancy shoes. He pulls a face. “Who are you?”

Jon lifts his chin towards Sansa’s apartment. “A friend.”

The man smiles. “Well, then. I’m the lady’s landlord.”

“Is she expecting you?” Jon asks, knowing she can’t be.

There’s no way Sansa planned for Jon to bring his specimen over at the same time she was expecting her landlord to show up.

He smiles again, a slippery, oily smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Something came up. Ms. Stark will understand. Perhaps you can come by later, while we handle business.”

“Most business can just be handled in an e-mail, don’t you think?”

“Not this, I’m afraid.”

“Prefer the personal touch?” Jon comes around the front of the truck. “Are you in the habit of dropping by unannounced?”

How many times has this guy done this to Sansa? Is this what she meant by creepy? It's not just a weird vibe. It's inappropriate.

“I think I mentioned, I’m the lady’s landlord. I have the right to enter these premises. I own them. I own several properties in the area.”

Is that supposed to impress?

“Not her though.”

“Well, yes, that would be ridiculous.”

“Even landlords owe renters some courtesy. Especially female renters. Don’t you think?” he asks, spreading his hands. “Otherwise,” Jon says, stalking over the grass, “it’s just fucking creepy.”

“I have no complaints. Especially from my female renters,” the man says, trying to square up, as Jon stops two feet away and towers over him. “Ms. Stark included. She happens to be an ideal tenant. Such a pleasure to have her renting from me. I always enjoy our interactions.”

He hasn’t punched anyone in a long time, but Jon feels that old spiraling tension starting to build, the one he used to fail control, when he was younger. He could knock that laughing smirk off this guy’s face. Easy. He’s so insufferably comfortable in his power over Sansa. Probably not just as her landlord. As a man.

A small fucking man.

“Sansa’s great, but there are some issues on your end you need to address.”

The man cocks a brow at him. “Is that right? Ms. Stark hasn’t brought anything to my attention.”

“Sure she has. She can’t even get you to send someone over to fix a cabinet, and yet here you are at—” Jon reaches for his phone and takes a sideways glance at the lock-screen before sliding it back in, “8:47 in the evening on a Sunday. That’s a little odd, man. You know, my landlord never did that. Maybe I wasn’t pretty enough.”

“That’s an unfair insinuation, young man.”

“You got a better explanation?”

“My repairman has been out of town. Everyone deserves a vacation.” The man’s sharp green eyes scan Jon. “You seem awfully well-informed about her rental situation.”

“Yep,” Jon says with a lift of his brows.

“ _Friend_ , you said?”

Pervert wants to know what’s the score between his renter and Jon.

And while he and Sansa might just be friends, she comes to him for a lot of stuff. Not just rides and quick fixes around her apartment. He’s got a goddamn lunch bag waiting in the truck proving beyond a doubt just what Sansa is willing to trust him with. That’s a damn partnership of its own kind.

“That’s right. I’m the one who fixed the goddamn cabinet you couldn’t be bothered with, and I’ll fix anyone that makes my friend uncomfortable too.”

He’s not just short. He’s built really slight. Jon could probably pick him up by the collar of his shirt. Give him a shake.

The guy rocks back enough to look at the toes of his shined shoes and pulls his hands free of his pockets. “Mr.… I didn’t catch your name.”

Jon crosses his arms over his chest. “Snow.”

“Mr. Snow, you have some friends on the Hill ready to rough me up for simply doing my job here?”

“No, I don’t need help for that.”

The guy thumbs the bridge of his nose. “I believe it. You strike me as a bit of a hoosier, Mr. Snow. Not the kind of man I’d expect to be friends with Ms. Stark.”

“Well, here I am.”

“She's too good for you. I'm sure you're aware.”

Her landlord doesn't get to decide that. Only Sansa can decide that.

Jon leans in lowering his voice. “I'm a hoosier, who will rearrange your face if I have to.”

Her landlord adjusts his suit coat with a jerk of the lapels. “You can’t come on my property and threaten me.”

“I just did, and you should go. Seriously. Only one of us was invited here.” He pats the man’s narrow shoulder. “Good talk.”

“Well, I will have to come back. You’ve wasted my time and unfortunately I have other things to attend to tonight before getting home to my wife.”

 _Poor woman_.

He points a narrow finger at Jon. “If you ever threaten me again, Mr. Snow, I’ll call the police and have you removed from my premises.”

Jon thinks about how this guy has keys to Sansa’s place. About how he could show up here tomorrow, when Jon’s not around, and insist on coming inside. With his manicured goatee and weaselly face.

“We’ll see how fast they get here, huh? How’s the response time in this area? About twelve minutes probably? Give or take. Plenty of time.”

The guy’s eyes flash wide. He hesitates, giving a quick backwards glance at the apartment.

Jon repeats himself through a tight grin, “Bye now.”

Mr. Baelish shrugs his suit coat and steps to the side, since Jon isn’t moving. _Coward_.

Jon doesn’t turn to watch him make the short walk back to the car. He stares forward at Sansa’s black door with its classic brass knocker, feeling his pulse in his temples and trying to fight the urge to spin on this creep and knock him against the car for good measure.

Sansa’s been through some stuff with men. Even if he doesn’t know all the particulars, he knows enough. She doesn’t need this type of guy in her life, and if he does have to be her landlord, at least he should have to think twice before he attempts to use his access to his advantage.

Sansa’s door cracks open. Her face appears and one hand wraps around the doorframe. He breathes out, the tightness in his chest loosening at the sight of her.

Jon lifts a finger. “Wait until this asshole is gone. I gotta grab the thing.” He exhales hard. “Hi by the way.”

“Hi,” she answers back, sounding a little unsure, as her landlord's car door reverberates with its closing.

Jon flexes his right hand. “I was going to text and then he showed up.”

“Okay.”

The engine starts and Jon forces himself to walk back towards the truck, scrubbing his face hard, so he doesn’t look like a crazy man, when he brings her the lunch bag.

Anger management issues might disqualify him as a candidate for what she's got planned.

He yanks on the passenger side door handle too hard, eyes fixed on the black car pulling away from the curb.

“Jon?”

“Yeah,” he calls back, head disappearing inside the vehicle.

“You were out here with Mr. Baelish for a while.”

He grabs the lunch bag by its black nylon strap. The blue outside fabric is covered in condensation. Hopefully the ice pack held up for the forty-minute drive and however long it took to threaten Mr. Baelish.

“Yep,” he says, slamming the door shut.

“Did you scare him off?” she asks, opening her door wider, as he crosses the grass.

He lifts the bag up to show her he’s got it. “No, of course not. I told him to make an appointment next time before dropping by.”

“Jon, I heard at least half of what you said,” she says, running an engraved locket along the length of the chain hanging around her neck.

“Is that what he does?” he asks, jerking his thumb towards the BMW that’s now disappeared. “Show up unannounced? At night?”

“Sometimes,” she says, leaning her hip into the doorframe.

“Not anymore. And if something else breaks in this place, which it will, because he hired some half-ass contractor, please just call me. Don't bother with him.”

“Okay,” she says with a little lift of her lips. “He’s married.”

“You don’t really think that disqualifies him as a goddamn predator, right?”

Her eyes flick to his torso and back up. “No.”

He glances down at his t-shirt. He hasn’t sweat through it. Could have though with as humid as it is and how hot that guy got him.

 _Fuck_ , it would have felt good to punch him.

“You threatened him. I heard you.”

He frowns. “Yeah.”

“And you think I’m pretty.”

He sucks in air, holds it, as he looks over her head, and then exhales through his nose. “Well, I’d be an idiot if I didn’t.”

He thrusts the lunch bag forward. “You can keep the bag.”

She laughs and bites her lower lip, as she takes it from him. His eyes lower to her mouth, the locket she’s still fiddling with, and back up to her eyes. The gas carriage lantern alongside her door throws flickering shadows across her cheeks from her lashes.

“Thanks, but I’ve got enough lunch bags. Cute ones.”

He scratches at his temple with his middle finger. “Now you’ve got another one. I’m not carrying lunches in it after this.”

“It’s _your_ specimen, Jon,” she says, looking down at the bag.

There’s no way he’d have ever guessed one day he’d be handing Sansa Stark his ejaculate in a lunch bag. Chilled ejaculate in a cup, double bagged.

“Doesn’t make it any better,” he says, bracing his forearm on the doorframe above her head.

It brings him close to her and she looks up into his face. “Thank you for what you said to Mr. Baelish. And this,” she says, raising the bag a couple of inches. “Not just the new lunch bag. I know it’s a little awkward, but thank you.”

“Sure,” he says, gut flipping.

She bites that pink lip again. “Funny way to spend a Sunday night, right?”

“Yeah. Feels odd to drop this off and run too.”

Normally she doesn’t keep him standing at the door like this. She invites him in and offers him something to drink, shares something she’s baked recently. They almost have a routine at this point.

“A little.”

“Like I’m fleeing a crime scene.”

“Right,” she says with a toothy smile. “Or it's a secret mission.”

“Let’s go with that.”

“Secret agent is more dignified than smash and grab. They have better wardrobes too,” she says, pinching his t-shirt and pulling it away from his abdomen.

A muscle in his stomach twitches.

“You want me in a suit next time I drop something off?”

Her eyes glitter with something that makes his fingers splay against the doorframe.

“I wouldn't complain.”

He tips his head down closer to hers. “Do you want me to stick around? We could watch Netflix.”

She rests her head against the doorframe. “Normally I would totally say yes. Can I get a raincheck?”

It’s a small thing and gently said, but the rejection piggybacks on the aggression still fading from his body and he feels it like a stab of pain in his chest.

He nods, straightening up. “Yeah, of course.”

She reaches up to touch him. “I don’t think I can manage to do what I need to do with you hanging around. Sorry.”

“Shit. Of course.”

He can feel his face getting hot. She’s holding a damn specimen in a bag, and he’s getting all dumb just standing close to her.

“Let’s hang out after dinner, though, watch bad tv,” she says with a pat to his chest. “Where are we meeting this time?”

The group dinner, she means, which is already on the calendar well in advance. It’s more last minute when Arya is in charge.

“Billie-Jean.”

Her fingertips trail over his t-shirt, as her hand pulls back and she presses it to her middle. “That’s right. Too cool for us, maybe.”

He hasn’t seen her in a few weeks, since she’s selling her stuff exclusively on Etsy. Lots of texts but nothing in person. Dinner with the Starks is a whole month away.

His mouth twitches. “Jeyne’s pick, I think.”

“Probably. There is no way Robb would come up with that.”

Robb would have them eat at C.J. Mugg’s for their customary dinner every damn time if it was up to him. Plenty of screens to watch whatever game he’s invested in. But at least you can get a burger there.

“Yeah, I doubt it.”

“You’ll have to dress up,” she says, bumping the door open wider with her hip. The AC hits him. “Hey, I made you something. Wait here.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, as she disappears inside.

What the fuck was he thinking? Was he going to laze around on her sofa, scrolling through Netflix, while she took care of things in the bedroom?

He extends his hand to stop the door as it swings back to close on him. It jars up through his arm.

“It’s still warm,” she promises, crossing the distance between the kitchen and the entryway, as he holds open the door for her, face still burning. Whatever she’s carrying is wrapped in parchment and about the size of a brick. “Banana bread and I put chocolate chips in it. That’s the way Bran and Rickon like me to make it.”

He swallows. “Thanks, Sans. Sounds really good.”

“It’s just a little something,” she says with a shrug, placing it in the palm of his hand.

He stares down at it, grateful he has something to do with his hands, which suddenly feel huge and awkward. There’s a notecard tucked under the ribbon she’s wrapped the whole thing with. Her name scrawled across it in a greyish-blue. Jon thought Mrs. Stark’s personalized stationery was a sign of impossible wealth, when he was a kid.

“I didn’t want to send you away empty-handed.”

It was always supposed to be just a drop-off. Always. He knew that.

“I’d say this'll be breakfast for the week, but it won’t last that long.”

She grasps his bicep and raises up on her toes, and his head jerks up just as she kisses his cheek, lingering there for long enough that his eyes slip closed.

“Thank you,” she says, her other hand coming up to caress to his face.

He nods. The lump in his throat won’t let him say anything. He wouldn’t know how to put into words what he’s feeling anyway, as she lowers back down and looks at him with something he can’t read in her eyes.

He turns, so she doesn’t have to shut the door in his face. He’s stuck around for too long.

 _Stay in your lane_.

Breathing out slowly, he’s gripping the banana bread too tightly, when he hears her door shut and his feet hit the curb.

Settled in the seat of his truck, he stares down at his parting gift. Baked goods. Baked goods with a note. Mrs. Stark sometimes sent baked goods to his house, along with Mr. Stark, when he came over to help out with something. Maybe as a reminder that she was his. There was always a note, which Jon knows, because he was the one to tear into whatever she sent. Her recipe for whatever it was she was gifting often graced the fancy stationary. His mom always threw the recipes out. She wasn’t a baker and she didn’t have time for it anyway.

Sansa wouldn’t bother sharing a banana bread recipe with him. He manages to keep himself alive, but grilled chicken and boiled broccoli are about the extent of his skills.

He pinches the thick cardstock and pulls, until it comes free of the wide ivory ribbon holding it in place. Flipping it over, he recognizes her girlish, bubbled handwriting. She signed his senior yearbook in this same script.

_I’ll love you forever for this. You’ll never know how much._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word on the hoosier insult. Anywhere else in the States, hoosier means someone from Indiana. But in St. Louis it means something different. It's almost the equivalent of redneck, except, plenty of hoosiers are city-dwellers, especially in South City. Think bad haircuts, lovers of guns, questionable things in the front lawn. Plenty of people wear it as a badge of honor and think hoosiers are neighborly and generous. It felt apropos in this case not only because of the setting, but because St. Louis Magazine defines it thus, "their wife who may also be their sister." Aw, Jon x Sansa <3


	4. She's Misread This

Sansa could be pregnant. Right now, sitting next to him at Billie-Jean.

It's an impossibly sexy shotgun restaurant with a mid-century Manhattan supper club feel that Jeyne picked for a group dinner, in spite of it having a date night vibe to it. Under different circumstances, this could be a bring your wife to celebrate the big news kind of place. Under their circumstances, their very modern, independent, planned but not public circumstances, she could be pregnant and no one would know it but her.

She hasn’t told him, and he isn’t going to ask. It’s understandable that she’d want to keep it to herself. In spite of his critical contribution, it’s personal information. Hers to share or not on her timeline with whomever she chooses.

With that in mind, he didn't ask going into it if she would keep him informed, and he didn’t try to convince her the right guy would come along and this setup was unnecessary. It occurred to him to speak up, as he sat on the floor of her kitchen, wishing he could just kneel next to her and kiss her. But he put a lid on it. He didn’t put it out there that maybe she didn’t need to do it alone, because it’s about what she wants, not his self-interest.

His timing is terrible. He’s a big boy though, and he’ll deal. She’ll tell him if she’s pregnant when she feels comfortable doing so. Maybe before it becomes obvious to anyone who looks at her.

She looks great tonight.

He stretches his arm out, draping it over the back of her wooden chair, as his eyes move over her. It’s not like she’d look different, pregnant with his baby—the baby that is his and isn’t going to be _his_. She wouldn’t show a few weeks in. She looks the same as she always does—slim and long legged—in her knit ribbed dress, which despite having a high-neck and extending half way down her calf, is open in the back and tight enough that it leaves little to the imagination. It’s not a dress that could really hide anything if there was something to hide.

But that’s crazy to even think about, because it's only been a few weeks, since he dropped off the specimen at her place. Still, he can’t stop looking at her.

With her red fingernail moving down the paper menu, she catches him looking and smiles over at him. His heart climbs in his throat, as she brushes her hair off her shoulder.

_I’ll love you forever for this._

He put the note in his bedside table. He felt compelled to keep it, but he can't actually risk looking at it again. He has to keep his shit together, for her sake.

He doesn’t see the server coming, his focus being elsewhere. Suddenly, she's at Sansa’s side, balancing a giant tray of small plates. They ordered with her guidance. It smells good, but Jon can’t remember what they picked. He’s been distracted ever since he sat down in the empty seat next to Sansa. She saved it for him with her straw clutch purse—an unusual seating arrangement within their friend-group, which thankfully went without comment from the peanut gallery.

Sansa waves the server off, when she starts to lower her overburdened tray next to her. “You might be better off putting it on the other side of the table. They’ll eat way more than me.”

“You don’t want any?” Jon asks, as the server moves around the table.

She shakes her head.

Did they make selections pregnant people can’t eat? She’s not drinking tonight either, but there’s nothing really unusual about that. She doesn’t drink when they’re out more often than not.

The last time they actually went out drinking, though, she was so friendly and flirty and kept teasing him. It made him a little too keen. Jon knows Robb noticed his friend kept putting his hand in the small of Sansa’s back and that she sat on his thigh with her arm slung around his neck, when they were on the trolley.

The server places the appetizer plates closest to Jon, and he peels his eyes from Sansa to hand them out to Robb and Jeyne, who are sitting too close together on the black banquette, and to his right, where Arya sits, nursing a beer.

Jeyne grabs a plate of food closest to her. “Who wants duck spring rolls? They’re supposed to be super yummy. I read about it in RFT.”

They look good, but Sansa shakes her head again.

“Just give me and Jon the spare ribs, honey,” Robb says, lifting his chin at the glazed plate of ribs almost hanging off the edge of the table by Arya.

“No. These are mine,” Arya says, grabbing two ribs for herself.

“You’re not going to eat all of those,” Robb protests, reaching across the table and nearly upsetting Jon’s water glass.

The tables are too small—intimate would be the industry term. Jon waited enough tables to know. They’re sitting at three pushed together two-top tables and it still doesn’t feel like enough room. It’s dark and clingy and he keeps bumping Arya with his elbow every time he straightens up from talking to Sansa. The walls are black, the ceiling is back, the tiny circle tile is so dark it might as well be back. Only broken up by the white tablecloths and green ferns and black and white framed art. Jon isn’t sure what the inkblots hanging on the wall are about, but if he said what they looked like, it would probably betray the tunnel like vision of his thoughts.

Arya swats at Robb's hand, as Jon leans back in closer to Sansa. “Do you want to order something different?”

When they were discussing what to order, she didn’t give a preference. Sansa is accommodating, but he knows she has her preferences.

She touches his thigh under the table. “I had a late lunch. Marg was in a meeting and needed me. I couldn’t get away. Go ahead, eat my share if you want,” she says, giving his leg a squeeze before withdrawing her hand.

In jeans, he wouldn’t have felt her touch all that much. Summer weight dress slacks are a different story. He shifts on his chair.

“You sure?” he asks, as she goes back to staring at her menu.

She nods without looking up.

Unintentionally, she’s fully coordinated with the décor tonight, all black and white. Pale skin she’s careful not to let freckle. Black dress. That red hair though doesn’t fit the scheme. He’s always liked red-heads. Hers is a really pretty dark red. Thick. He could get a good handful of it if he kissed her.

He brushes the back of her arm with his thumb, where his hand dangles over the edge of her seat-back. “Share a dessert with me.”

“Okay,” she says with an amused little quirk of her mouth, “twist my arm.”

“Jon,” Arya says in a way that makes him think maybe she’s said it more than once.

He twists in the chair.

She waves her hand slowly in front of him. “Hello? Earth to Jon.”

“Yeah? What’s up?”

She raises her brows at him and pointedly looks over at Sansa.

 _Right_.

He drags his arm off Sansa’s chair and smooths his hand through his hair.

He should probably stop hanging all over her. She’s not his girlfriend.

There is, however, a kid in the works that Arya and Robb and the rest of the Starks can’t know is his. Probably an even better reason to keep his hands to himself.

“What is going on with you? Weirdo.”

“What?” he asks, grabbing his Coke.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m hungry,” he says into the glass, as the round ice bumps his lip.

When Sansa didn’t order a glass of wine, he ordered a Coke. In solidarity. For a pregnancy he can’t even be sure exists.

There are matchbooks on the bar here, but you can’t smoke, and dice too, though there are no games to play. All smoke and mirrors. Just like his life at the moment.

“Um, you’re hardly talking to me.”

“What’s up at work?”

She screws up her face at him. “Really? Is that the best you’ve got? Work sucks.”

“I’m beat. I’ve been working on a new piece this week. A commission for that boutique hotel on Delmar. I can’t get the design the way I want it.”

She frowns. “Sorry to hear that.”

“You know what they say about all work and no play,” Jeyne says, jumping in, as she bumps Robb’s shoulder with hers. He wraps an arm around her. “Should I ask him, Robbie?”

Jon and Arya share a look. _Robbie_.

“Oh, you want to ask him about Val?” his best friend asks with a grin.

“Who’s Val?” Sansa asks, head popping up from the menu.

Arya is already groaning dramatically, when Robb says with an arch of his brows, “Jeyne’s got a girl picked out for you, man.”

“Great,” Arya gripes.

Robb and Jeyne talk in a quick back and forth patter, building on each other in perfect synchronization.

“This Val she works with is a beaut.”

“I want to set you guys up.”

“You should definitely say yes.”

“I’ll give you her number.”

Arya points her beer across the table. “Don’t. Jeyne, you don’t know, but Jon’s no good when he’s dating. _Robb_ should know better. It’s kind of disgusting.”

“Excuse me?” Jon says, crunching a piece of ice. “That’s slander.”

This is a nice restaurant, the kind of place you don’t chew ice, he realizes, as Sansa’s attention flicks over to him.

“Back me up, Sans,” Arya says, leaning forward enough to give her sister an expectant look.

Sansa’s affect, however, is flat. “You’re on your own.”

“Fine. He’s the worst about it, and he has bad taste. Like epically bad. Dany was the actual worst. Jon’s ex,” Arya explains for Jeyne’s benefit.

“I’ve heard.” Jeyne gives him a little apologetic tilt of her head. “Sorry, Jon.”

Robb really didn’t need to talk about Jon’s ex with Jeyne.

“Don’t make me defend her,” he pleads, dragging his hand through his hair again.

He can't just sit here and let them talk shit about her.

When things ended, it was a big blow up with a lot of ugly accusations directed at him. He discounted what she leveled at the time, but maybe she wasn’t entirely off the mark. He thought it was outrageous that she was jealous of anyone, especially Sansa and Arya, when he was totally devoted to her.

“And despite the fact that she is the worst,” Ayra says, turning the beer on him, “You were obsessed. We hardly saw you. I’d prefer not to repeat that.”

“You know,” he says, setting his Coke down. “Dany had a different take on this.”

“Oh, did she?” Arya says with a mock pout.

“Maybe she didn’t want to come around you guys that much, because you were jerks.”

_Why don’t you just fuck one of the Stark girls, so you don’t have to fit anyone new into your little group?_

He’d insisted at the time that he didn’t think of either of them that way. It wasn’t the full truth even then.

“Leave Jon alone,” Sansa says with a pat to the table right beside him. “He’s just a good boyfriend.”

“She kept you from us,” Arya says, slugging back her beer.

“Can we not rehash my love life?”

“The best cure for heartbreak is a new girlfriend,” Jeyne says, lit up with that excitement couples have, when they think they can couple someone else up.

“I'm not heartbroken. It's been a good while. I'm good.”

Jeyne snatches her purse off the banquette. “Then you're ready to move on. Seems a shame to have you be single,” she says, digging in it with a little scowl. “There have to be a million girls out there that would be thrilled to date you.”

“A vast exaggeration,” Jon says.

“You have your own business,” Jeyne points out. “An entrepreneur? Someone who works with their hands? And you’re such a good guy.”

“You’re not super ugly,” Robb adds.

“Thanks for that.”

“Jon’s trying to grow his business,” Sansa says, her attention fixed purposefully down on the menu. “That’s his focus right now.”

Billie-Jean’s menu is one sheet. Single sided with only about six main courses on it. It’s not exactly a thick tome.

“I think she might be your type,” Jeyne says, undeterred. “And a good girlfriend wouldn’t derail you. I really like her. You might hit it off,” Jeyne says, lifting her phone up and swiping.

Jeyne hasn’t been around for that long. He doesn’t think she knows him well enough to judge.

“What’s my type exactly?”

“Robb tells me—”

“Cold and bitchy,” Robb says, interrupting his girlfriend.

Jeyne jabs him in the side. “Don’t use that word.”

Robb is no idiot. He apologizes immediately. “Kidding. Sorry. Bad joke.”

“People use that word with assertive women. There’s no equivalent for men,” Jeyne quietly lectures.

“Well, that’s exactly it: Jon likes to be bossed around,” Arya says with a snort.

“Okay, let's be clear: I like smart girls. Someone strong and independent,” Jon says, swirling the ice in his glass with a rotation of his wrist.

“Someone who doesn’t need to be saved from their landlord,” Sansa says.

It's an odd addition to the conversation to anyone uninformed about their interactions, and Arya at least leans forward to give her a once-over.

But before anyone can comment, Sansa's tone shifts, turning overly bright to ask in that not really a suggestion way of hers, “Should we order?”

Jon’s fingers flex against the glass. “No. I mean, go ahead and order, but Sans, that’s not—”

Her cheeks are flushed—a dusky pink in deep contrast to her pale skin. No one else seems to have noticed she's upset, but his whole body is attuned to her tonight. She isn't enjoying this line of conversation. Perhaps even less than Jon is.

She turns her head, scanning the room for their server, ignoring him.

He didn’t stop Baelish from knocking on her door unannounced because Sansa is helpless. It’s not about weakness. Having a baby on her own only goes to show how strong she is, how brave. Besides, she’s survived plenty of shit.

You have to call out gross behavior in other guys. That's the decent thing to do. Anything else makes you complicit.

Granted, he didn't just call him out: he threatened him too. But it’s Sansa. A chill, hey, not cool, man, kind of handling of the situation wasn’t going to satisfy Jon’s chest-tightening anger at the idea of someone creeping around her.

“I know what I’m going to get,” Arya says, and Jeyne makes a little ooh face. “Do you think they’d hold the mushrooms on the mushroom pizza?”

“That’s the best part,” Jeyne tries to object, but Arya is reaching across the table for the phone Jeyne has dangling from her fingers, already forgotten in the excitement of finding out what everyone is going to order.

“I want to see this girl. Do you have a picture? You Facebook friends or something?”

“Instagram. Robb’s not kidding: she’s crazy pretty.”

“I’m perfectly fine being single,” Jon says, frowning over at Sansa, who won’t look up from the menu, which must hold the secrets to the universe based on the amount of attention she’s giving it.

“I’m ready to order if our server turns up,” Sansa says, suddenly covering the sheet with a splayed hand.

“What are you gonna get?” he asks her, lowering his voice.

Her hand slides over the menu, fingers curling into her palm. “Don’t you want to see the picture?”

“Not really. You okay?”

“Perfect. I’m great.” She doesn’t sound it. “The red snapper sounds good,” she says even more perkily.

“Snapper?”

Do pregnant people eat fish? Jon isn’t up on the rules. He just knows they exist. Because of mercury maybe? The oceans are full of bad shit. He recycles and he took a cold shower before dinner, but maybe he should get an electric car if he’s going to have offspring on this filthy planet.

“What about you?” she asks, as he drapes his arm over her chair again to get close.

Using the tip of his forefinger to slide her menu around enough that he can read it, he leans in closer to read in the dim light. He hasn’t actually picked what he wants. He’s been too preoccupied with what he really wants.

With their heads almost touching, he can smell her shampoo. It's clean and vaguely floral.

“Uh, swordfish and sunchokes and fennel.”

Her mouth quirks. “Yeah, right. No you're not.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t even know what that means. Strip steak,” he says, as Arya shoves Jeyne’s phone under his nose, “and French fries. Shocker, right?”

“Mr. Meat and Potatoes,” Sansa says, almost sounding like she might laugh, but Jon loses whatever he’s regained with her, as Arya gives the phone a shake.

He can’t ignore her; she won't let him. “Okay, Jesus.”

“Just look. She’s hot,” Arya says, pointing, as he cradles the phone in his hand.

Sansa turns her attention to the menu again, picking it up this time. Without the tealight candle on the table illuminating the page, there’s no way she’ll be able to read it. She should have it memorized by now anyway.

“Ugh. It went to sleep,” Arya says, snatching the phone back.

He hadn’t gotten around to looking at it, but the phone is in his hand again, awake, after getting it back from Jeyne.

“Look at this hot girl,” Arya says, pointing once more. “I’ll date her if you don’t want to.”

“Go for it,” Jon says with a twitch of his mouth. “She might like you better.”

“You don’t think she’s pretty?” Jeyne asks, sounding wounded.

He stares at the honey blonde haired woman in the profile and peppered throughout her Instagram photos. What otherwise dominate are nature heavy shots—mountains, ski slopes, a snowboard up against a tree, the beach, a strip of road in the desert.

“She’s pretty right?” Jeyne repeats.

“Yeah, no, clearly.”

“And she’s really active. Likes outdoorsy stuff. That sounds like it might be a good fit for you.”

Jon hands the phone back. “Yeah.”

It sounds like Ygritte.

“So? You want me to exchange info? I can give you her cell.”

“I doubt she’d be interested,” he says, reaching for his Coke again.

“But she is. I showed her your photo.”

Robb grins. “Jon’s always punched above his weight.”

“Yeah, right. You were both losers in high school. Straight up,” Arya says.

She's not wrong about him: Jon couldn’t ever bring himself to talk to girls. But Robb had an easy way with everyone. He was popular without trying.

“Robb was captain of the football team, Arya,” Jon says, swallowing. “You remember things a little differently than the rest of us.”

“I remember we had a terrible team. Lots of losses,” Arya says with a shit-eating grin.

“You were five,” Robb responds, vastly exaggerating the age difference between them, but Arya plays right into it, sticking out her tongue.

“I thought you didn’t want Jon to date,” Sansa says, sharply enough that everyone’s eyes fix on her in surprise. “Make up your minds. Or learn some boundaries. He said he wasn’t interested. Can we change the subject already?”

“Oh,” Jeyne says, eyes wide.

Sansa not only plays peacemaker among them. She's also usually the first person to welcome someone new into the group. She was the person who was nicest to Sam, when Jon’s camp friend visited Winterfell Lane for the first time. Thus far, she’s been nothing but nice to Jeyne. She's certainly never snapped at her.

Even Sansa was icy with Dany though.

“Sans,” Robb says with a shake of his head.

Jon can hear his friend’s foot scuff under the table, aiming at his sister. Sansa dodges his kick. She tucks her legs to the side, until her calf wraps behind his. Her hand finds his thigh.

His jaw works, as he tries not to look down at where her hand presses against him. Is it higher this time? He’d swear it’s higher, but she lets go before he can decide.

“Let’s order,” she says with a smile that says, let’s not fight, even though she’s the one that made it weird.

He clears his throat. “Thanks. I’m sure she’s great. I’ve got enough on my plate though. With my business.”

Jeyne tucks her phone away with a quick look from Sansa to Jon. “Your loss.”


	5. It's Personal

It’s a clear night. The kind of summer night that should be full of blinking lightning bugs and the chorus of crickets and frogs. At home at least, in the summer nights of her childhood. Sansa looks up, but unlike at home, where you can see every star in the sky, here the light pollution spoils a good clear night.

An arm slips through hers, interrupting her moment of reverie. Jon, solid and dependable, hanging back in order to wait for her after everyone has left. He was always there too on Winterfell Lane, catching lightning bugs and still setting off bottle rockets two weeks after the fourth.

“How about that lemon meringue?” he asks, jostling her arm companionably.

“Dessert was a good idea.”

But it always is: she has a sweet tooth. Jon passed the test, giving her the last bite with a wordless push of the plate towards her. He passes every test. Except, she shouldn't be auditioning him.

“You ready to go? I’ll drive you.”

She looks up at him, as he pulls her in tighter to his side. He's so solidly male. It's a ridiculous distraction. Like the way his voice feels like fingers trailing her spine, when he speaks in that low voice, leaning into her. The entire dinner, she was hyper aware of him in a way she didn’t used to be. Jon was safe. She could flirt and trust him not to go too far and it would feel nice, but she'd be unaffected. Harmless.

If she gets in that car, he’ll walk her to the door and then what?

“It’s only a couple blocks. I walked here just fine.”

“Yeah, but it’s late. Come on,” he says, tilting his head towards where his truck is parked.

Not just a friendly offer then, but one made out of concern for her safety. It's legitimate, but she feels that same prick in her chest as when he was listing off what he’s into in a girl back in the restaurant. All qualities that don't come first to people's mind when describing Sansa Stark.

“I walk everywhere. I’m capable of getting home in one piece.”

A car drives by, sending a hot gust of air across the sidewalk, where the tables sit empty, everyone preferring the AC.

“This about what happened with me and your landlord?”

She should have just accepted the offer of a ride gracefully and kept her mouth shut. She’s really not herself tonight. She hasn’t been for a few days.

She pulls her arm free and he steps back a foot on the sidewalk, giving her space. 

“Look, I told him he was being a creep, because he needed to hear it.”

“You threatened him.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, so the thought of someone frightening you—”

“I’m not scared of him. Even though I’m not a tough girl.”

Jon knows some of her history, and she doesn’t want that to color what he thinks of her and her ability to take care of herself and a child. She doesn’t want him having doubts about her judgment.

Jon shoves his hands in his dress slacks. “The thought of someone being inappropriate with you makes me want to end them. Okay? That’s my shit.”

It shouldn’t, but Jon saying that makes her heart speed up a little. That’s the romantic stuff she concocted as a teenager. White knight. Heroes. Only, she’s pretty sure Jon isn’t going to marry a girl he has to save over and over again. That’s who she is to him, the little girl down the lane, who he sticks up for on the playground. It really shouldn’t bother her—that she falls into that category in his mind—but it does.

She’s one category and Val and women like her fall into another category—strong, independent women. The thought of him dating that blonde, who will scale mountains with him, and give him Viking babies, churns her stomach.

“I know you’re capable of handling yourself. I’m sorry if I made things worse with your landlord.”

She shakes her head, because he didn't make things worse, he was trying to help. Her insecurity is making him feel bad, which is the last thing she wants.

He stands there, watching her, and she feels the burn behind her eyes that she’s been fighting the past few days ever since the drugstore pregnancy test.

She twists to the side and looks up again, though it will be the same soupy darkness overhead.

“You going to make me drive alongside you, while you walk?”

Her fingers smooth over the tortoise shell handle of her clutch. “I’d love a ride. Sorry. I’m just feeling sensitive.”

He steps back into her, close enough that he could wrap an arm around her waist, and to any car driving by, they’d be a couple leaving Billie-Jean on a Saturday night.

A part of her wishes that's what they were. If she lets herself, she can picture what it would be like, having him be her boyfriend, having him be devoted to her the way he was with Dany.

It's ridiculous to daydream about it though. He’s giving her a lot more than that anyway. Or he tried.

“You know,” he says, slinging his arm around her shoulder, “I was promised a wild night of Netflix.”

“You don’t _have_ to hang out with me. It was a nice offer in an awkward moment, but I’m not going to hold you to it.”

It’s almost brotherly, the way he half lifts her off the sidewalk with his jarring of her shoulder and kissing the crown of her head. But his hand splayed on her bare arm makes her want to fold herself into his chest and see if he’ll move that hand somewhere else. If she could coax him into wanting her.

She really can't afford to seduce Jon. Not under normal circumstances and especially not with their current arrangement still in play.

She begins counting days in her head, trying to figure out where she is in her cycle to be such a mess, as he spins her on her sandals and starts walking them down the sidewalk.

“Awkward hardly describes it, Sans, but your banana bread was delicious.”

“Oh, so you’re hoping for baked goods.”

“If I’m lucky,” he says, fishing in his pocket. He lets go of her to unlock the passenger side door and opens it for her like a proper gentleman. “Come on. You can kick me to the curb after I drop you off if you like.”

She has to shut her eyes for a second as the door closes behind her and he walks around the front of the vehicle.

The whole picture—it’s what she wanted. A husband, a handsome one, who would take her out to nice restaurants, hold the door, buy her roses. Kids. Monogrammed pillows on the bed and Christmases with so many gifts it would take all morning to open them. She knows there are more important things. But the picture still looks good in her mind.

_Get a hold of yourself._

She looks over as he climbs in. “God, it's hot. Let me get these windows down,” he says, as he fumbles with the ignition.

The important thing was to secure what was good out of that picture—a family for herself, the child she wanted. With Jon as the donor.

The windows lower and he exhales hard. “There we go.”

He looks so handsome. She can make out his bicep muscle under the sleeve of his shirt, as he turns the wheel to pull away from the curb.

“I didn’t get a chance to say back there: you look nice,” she says.

When she saw him come through the door, one hand in his pocket, looking around for them, her heart flip-flopped in her chest. Somehow, it made it that much worse, them trying to shove some girl down his throat, when he looked so put together and he smelled so good every time he shifted close to talk to her over the hum of the place.

If he starts dating someone and disappears, she’ll lose a friend, a good one. She’ll probably lose any hope of him being involved in her child’s life. That’s what principally matters. Not how solid his thigh felt under her hand. But she couldn't stop thinking about that either.

“Well, you told me to dress up.”

They pull up to a red light and she gives him another once over, as he stares forward. “Are you totally miserable?”

“No.”

“Good. You should take my advice more often then.”

“On wardrobe? Is this a subtle hint I dress terrible?”

The light changes.

“No, but men who usually dress casual look hot dressed up and men who normally wear a suit look hot when they’re all casual.

He grins still looking forward. “Hot huh?”

“Don’t act surprised.”

He laughs.

“It’s a universal law, Jon.”

“Oh, we’re talking physics then.”

“Yes. This and gravity.”

“Were you good at science, Sans?”

One more block and they’ll be at her street, and she can't stop herself, her body tingles with the thrill of getting him to smile, laugh, to look sideways at her at the stop sign and have his eyes rake over her.

“Don’t you start with me. I know what I’m talking about. If I felt like doing you a favor, I’d take a picture of you for your dating profile.”

“You can take a picture of me if you want, but I’m not one for online dating.”

“Could find the love of your life.”

He puts on the indicator—so responsible, the type of person who is actually honest in an online profile—and makes a right onto her street.

“Wouldn’t my business suffer?”

The thrill of the chase is abruptly cut short, and she gazes out the window as her neighbors’ places pass by. “Let’s forget that whole conversation. I’m pretty sure I hurt Jeyne’s feelings. Not my best moment.”

There’s an open spot and he pulls forward and back. He turns the key, and she breathes through her nose, as he braces his hand behind her seat. “Hey, I only brought it up, because I want you to know I’m really not going to pursue that.”

She drums her fingers on the clutch in her lap. “She was pretty.”

“I don’t have to date while we’re um… or while you’re doing this is what I'm saying.”

His brows draw up in that concerned, serious way of his. She grips the handle of the purse, forcing herself not to reach up a hand to smooth out his worry lines with her fingertips.

She'll get over this spark of attraction, and he'll move on with his life.

“The baby won’t be going anywhere. You’re not going to wait eighteen years. It’ll happen at some point: you’ll date, get married. You should do what you want.”

She grabs the door handle and pulls.

She has to get out of that car with him looking so intense and nothing but a console between them. She hurries over the grass and skips over the puddle the automatic sprinklers have made on the sidewalk. They need adjustment. It’s a waste of resources, watering pavement.

“Should I come in?” he calls out after her.

She should say she’s tired and they’ll catch up later, but she’s leaving on a business trip Monday and that’ll mean she won’t see him for at least a week. Longer, because the boys have that trip coming up too. She spent the last few days feeling isolated and disappointed. It’s her own doing to some degree: she’s the one who determined how this process would go, but company sounds good. Especially Jon’s. Which is the problem.

“Yes, but I have to disappoint you. I don’t actually have banana bread.”

His long strides catch him up as she reaches her door, and then he’s close enough that his front brushes her back, as she turns the key in the lock.

“Everything you make is delicious.”

She can feel his breath on her shoulder.

“I can probably find you something,” she says, looking up through her lashes at him, as the door gives under pressure. She tosses her purse down on the entry table and holds a hand out to him, so she can steady herself as she slips her sandals off. “Didn’t you eat enough tonight?”

“Never.”

“One day, you’ll lose that girlish figure, eating like a deckhand,” she says, letting go of his hand.

“If I have you baking things for me all the time. I seriously ate it in like three sittings.”

She shakes her head at him. “There’s a lot of butter in that, mister.”

He scuffs the back of his neck. “That note, Sans—”

She gives him a twitch of a smile. 

Jon isn’t hers. He’s her donor, but he doesn’t belong to her. She can’t put him on a shelf, taking him out of circulation. She should be repaying his considerable gift to her with a similar generosity of spirit, not acting like a jealous harpy.

Arya is possessive of Jon, territorial. This wasn’t like that, what she felt in the restaurant. This is worse. It felt like something was being pulled from her chest and she wasn’t allowed to scream.

What would some girlfriend think, finding one of Sansa's wrapped baked goods on his counter week after week? With sentimental notes tucked under the ribbon?

Dany called her once towards the end of their relationship. It was a shock, hearing her on the other end, since none of them had really hit it off. Arya openly resented the time Dany took away from the group, and every time they had gotten together, there'd been an uncomfortable vibe.

Dany asked her to back off. She asked Sansa to get them all to back off, so she and Jon would have a chance.

She and Jon only ever saw each other as part of the group, unless some coincidence threw them together or she was really stuck for a date to a work function. There wasn’t much backing off for her to do. Out of everyone, they were the least close.

It didn’t make much sense, which sort of confirmed Arya’s claims about the woman, but she listened. She used her most conciliatory tone with Dany, when she swore woman to woman that she understood and promised to do her best. But honestly, she wasn’t about to. In fact, she called Jon a few days later to ask if he would ever feel up to driving her and her stuff to craft fairs, once the season kicked off.

She hates what it says about her if she was out there trying to undermine his relationship just because didn’t like Dany. Her interference probably had nothing to do with what happened between them, them ending it, but that doesn’t absolve her. Even worse than the guilt she feels, she has a sinking feeling she finally gets what her real problem with Dany was.

Jon is doing her the biggest favor in the world. He deserves to be happy with some nice girl who changes her own oil and will go on hikes with him.

She can’t get in Jon’s way. Even if he’s so damn upright a person, he thinks he’d be stepping over a line by dating, while she’s trying to get pregnant. Donor guilt. That’s a new one.

“I’m not pregnant, so, you don’t have to feel weird about texting that girl if that’s what you want to do.”

The worried look he gives her makes her feel like she might start crying again, and at least she hasn't done that in a couple days.

“Don’t make a big thing of it. It’s not a big deal.”

“Sansa, I’m sorry.”

She's afraid of where this conversation ends if she lets it spin out of control. If she steers the conversation into something light, she can stay in a fantasy that her plan isn’t shot full of holes.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault,” she says, deliberating misunderstanding his sentiment. “I don’t think,” she adds in a bid for levity.

Light and breezy. All froth.

He doesn’t take the bait. “I guess it could be.”

He’s too serious. He looks too concerned for her, as his eyes move over her and he scrubs his mouth, his beard rasping against his palm. It’s Jon and he’s not a person to take things lightly, so it should come as no surprise, despite it being her thing and not his. But her heart is pounding out of her chest from his reaction, which so mirrors how she felt staring down at that stick. This is what she was missing, someone to share the feeling with. It's why she's felt so alone.

She's losing control, and she gropes wildly for that easy flirty thing between them. “Maybe I should have asked whether you’d ever knocked a girl up.”

Something flickers over his face, something worse than his concern and she reaches out to grasp his arm. “Hey, don’t listen to me. I'm not myself.”

He nods, and his expectant silence, trusting that she’ll unburden herself if he just listens, makes her bite her lip. It weakens her resolve.

“I knew the odds of it working the first time weren’t good. Can’t be upset over nothing, which is all it was.”

It didn’t feel like nothing. With a partner, they’d wait a couple of weeks and try again, but she knew she’d have to ask him again. They’d go through the whole specimen ordeal and she’d sit on her bed, looking at the cup and the syringe, trying not to lose her nerve. Trying not to think of Jon's face and his smile and his strong hands.

“I think the worst part was I didn’t have anyone to tell,” she confesses. “But you know now.”

“You could have told me. You don't have to do _everything_ on your own.”

“Next time, I guess.” If there is a next time. But she doesn’t just owe him his freedom to act like an actual single man, she also owes him a chance to back out. “But um, if you don’t want to try again, I get that. If you wished you could take it back? This could be your chance.”

“It wasn’t a one-shot deal.”

She breathes out hard.

_Don’t cry. Don’t cry._

He moves towards her. “Hey, it’s okay.”

She holds her hand out, trying to hold him back, so she won’t blubber all over his crisp dress shirt. But it's too late, she's lost control, and she feels the flood gates opening, the words coming fast. “You’re the best, and I don’t mean that in a flippant way. I’m not sure you actually know. I know you said you were flattered, but choosing you, with all my heart, Jon, that note doesn’t even cover it—”

His hand closes on her side and he pulls. She goes willing, gasping in relief at the press of his body against hers. He smells fresh. Like menthol soap. He smells like Jon. The smell that she couldn't clear from her head in the restaurant. He’s warm and solid. It feels so good to be held tight and close with his hands spanning her hips and back. Close like this, she can almost forget how easily she could lose him.

She places her hands on his waist and arches back enough to look up at him. “Jon,” she whispers, though she doesn’t know what she means by saying his name.

His eyes dart between hers. That worry line forms between his brows again, and he cups the side of her neck. He has a callus from his woodworking on the inside of his thumb that makes her suck in her breath, as he drags it up the curve of her throat.

She can’t look away from those interesting grey eyes, so sad and serious with pupils fat and dark.

“Sans, stop me if you want.”

His lips press against hers. So gently, impossibly so, and then he stops, held there for a pause, as if still waiting for her to push him away.

Every inch of her body wants more. This is what she's been missing. She rocks up to kiss him back. Over and over he kisses her. His hand threads into her hair, as he presses feather-light kisses to her mouth, which linger longer with every brush of his lips against hers. Pressing until they turn urgent and she grips his nice button-down shirt in her fists, so she doesn’t sink to the floor.

It’s horrible and selfish, but she doesn’t want him kissing other girls. She wants him kissing her. Like this. Making her pulse race and her breath come fast. His mouth and his beard under her questing fingertips.

His hands are strong against her hips. Fingers digging in, where she is widest, flexing, as he nudges her nose with his and smiles against her mouth, all hot breath and tender assault.

“Let me kiss you.”

She thought that’s what they were doing.

But it wasn’t. As good as his tension building kisses have been, when his tongue runs along the crease of her lips and they part for him, she forgets everything that came before. It’s just the falling feeling and the good sound he makes deep in his throat and the feel and taste of him. It’s like sex.

She lifts on her toes, trying to gain an inch, so she might deepen this heart pounding feeling and satisfy the throb starting to pulse through her body. She encircles his neck with her arms and tugs.

He strokes his thumb against her temple. “I’ve wanted to do that. For a while.”

“And what else?”

Arms firm against the small of her back, he lifts her. In this tight dress, she can’t get her legs around his hips. She dangles there, held aloft, pinned flush to his body. She makes a frustrated sound, and he stumbles forward with her two steps.

“Sofa?”

It’s probably a terrible idea, but she wants him and he wants her. It's too heady a feeling to ignore.

“Bed.”

Nostrils flared and breathing hard, he hesitates.

She caresses his cheek. “Bed.”

As he collapses on top of her on her bed, his hands are already pushing her dress up, working the clingy knit fabric up her body, as his lips find her neck. Lips and tongue and teeth scraping, sending tendrils of want down her limbs. She says his name again, “Jon,” as her heel slips on the comforter beneath them.

He shifts and she feels him. Slipping her hand along his back, she wraps one leg around him, urging him forward.

“Fuck,” he curses against her ear.

He rocks into her, takes her mouth in a kiss grown desperate. They move together, thrust and arch. Hips press harder, as he moves with urgency and she grips his hair, her raised thigh tightening to encourage the friction that has her head tipping back and her back curving off the bed.

And then he’s pulling free of her and she whines, until his fingers find their way inside her panties and she could weep at the sure movement of those callused fingers over her.

_Dear Lord._

She snakes her hands between them, grasping for his belt, grappling with his button and fly, and then shoving those slacks over his hips. Every sound, the clack of his belt, the zip of the zipper, and rustle of his shirt heightens her anticipation. More of this and him. His skin touching hers. And she rushes towards it, even as she bites her lip hard against the narrowing pleasure he's setting up and making her brain go fuzzy.

He says her name, her nickname, like a hiss, as her hands find him. “I don’t have a condom.”

He feels solid and hot in her grip. Heavy. She doesn't care about anything else.

“It’ll be okay.”


	6. It's Not Personal

Jon weaves through the wood top tables, every one of them filled. Jon’s lucky they seated Sansa, while he circled the block, looking for a space. Half & Half is always packed at breakfast.

With a little wave for him from the back corner, she slips out of her chair. Smoothing out her white strappy sundress, she meets him a couple steps away from the table. He’s not entirely sure how to greet her, but he goes in for a hug. That’s probably safe. It’s not exactly the place to back her into a wall to kiss her the way he'd like. But he can't not kiss her either; not with her hands gripping his sides and his heart starting to thud hard in his chest. He tips his head down to press a perfectly respectable kiss to her head.

Innocent hug. Innocent kiss. It all should be as innocent as before, but her dress is flimsy, almost like nothing under his touch, which reminds him how she felt naked, curled in his arms. He hasn’t seen her since. He feels the length of the separation like a pull in his chest, as she tucks into him.

Three weeks—not a long time in the scheme of things, but they've felt endless. First, she was on a business trip, and then Jon left the following Saturday on a vacation with Robb for two weeks fishing for trout in Waterton, Canada. Great fishing. Awkward as shit to be hanging out with her brother, considering. Not just the whole your sister and I slept together thing, but also the she was trying to have a baby with me before that too. All of it a state secret.

Instead of working out how they’d handle this—Sansa probably has a plan and he'll follow her lead—they’ve sent flirty texts. Physical distance doesn't really lend itself to serious stuff, makes it somehow more awkward, but it does facilitate adult texting. Some of those texts make him wish she hadn’t suggested they meet for coffee. Half & Half is not the place for what he'd like to do to her. But they'll get there eventually. After they work this all out.

“I missed you,” she says, speaking into his neck, and he slides his hand up her back over the soft expanse of skin above her dress to fit her closer.

“You too, Sans.”

Cell service was crap in Waterton. She’d send him a text and he wouldn’t get it until hours later. Including one time while he was in the shower and Robb helpfully picked it up after it chimed. Jon came out with a towel around his waist to greet his phone thrown down top of his bed and a stone-faced friend. Robb asked him what was up with Sansa texting him—kissy faces specifically.

Could have been worse. Not that Jon would admit this was mild in comparison to some of the other stuff. Since they haven’t had the talk yet, Jon sure as hell wasn’t going to tell his friend.

Pulling back, she grabs for her discarded napkin. “I ordered you a coffee. Black. I thought you might need one.”

“Thanks,” he says, lunging for the back of her chair, so he can pull it out farther for her. “It was a late one.”

He sent her a text when they landed, knowing she'd already be asleep. Just a quick, _We're home, see you tomorrow_.

“I think they say people who drink black coffee are psychopaths,” she says, as he picks up the blue and white ampersand mug, barely getting his ass in the seat before bringing it to his mouth.

Their flight was one of the last to land in St. Louis. Would have been a good morning to sleep in. But when she asked him to grab coffee when he got back, he suggested his first morning home, regardless of how tired he'd be. If it had been some other girl, Robb would have said he sounded too eager, but Jon wasn’t exactly seeking advice.

“Could be a problem if they’re right.”

He takes a sip. Not pipping hot, but Half & Half does have decent coffee regardless.

“Why’s that?” he asks, reaching for the menu with his free hand.

They have a steak and eggs thing on the menu that’s good. Shame about the brussels sprouts though. He’s starving. His last meal was fast food in Salt Lake’s airport, eaten while dragging a suitcase behind him.

“We should get those doughnuts with the chocolate sauce,” he says, looking up from the menu to take another fortifying sip of coffee.

“I’m pregnant.”

Jon looks down. Blinks at the menu. It’s a jumble. He can't read one word.

“Jon?”

He swallows and lifts his gaze.

Brightly lit by the cluster of mason jar lights overhead, she stares at him. At Billie-Jean, he wondered whether there was some magical tell-tale sign she was pregnant. Here she is actually pregnant, looking completely unaltered from the last time he saw her, roughly fifteen minutes after they’d showered together.

God, she felt so good, wet skin sliding against his. Kissing him under the spray of the shower-head.

 _Fuck_.

His palms are clammy, his chest tight. There are people all around them with the open kitchen just a few yards away, but the noise of the room doesn't reach his brain.

“Jon?”

He sets his mug down. It's that or drop it.

She tilts her head. “Turns out the old-fashioned way works too.”

He scrubs his mouth, and his beard scratches against his palm. He didn’t shave this morning. He’s receiving news he’s a father looking like a goddamn criminal.

“Actually, worked better in this case. Funny, huh?”

She’s all shrugs and pouted lips and a chipper tone. It's a front, a mask to whatever she's really feeling.

The Starks will be angry. It’ll look like a one-night stand. Like he didn’t care enough to date her before ruining her life. They’ll ask all the questions she wanted to avoid. Why were they sleeping together without telling anyone? Or, perfectly reasonably, why didn’t they think to use protection like adults?

His mother will be so goddamn disappointed in him.

“I shouldn’t have joked about the health of your swimmers.”

She’s babbling, and judging by the strained look developing on her face in spite of her best efforts to seem unaffected by this turn of events, he’s sitting there, probably looking like a flight risk.

“Christ. Are you okay?”

She can't be, and the only thing he can think to do is hold her, but there's a table between them and a room full of people.

“I mean, the smell of your coffee is making me want to throw up a little, but yeah.”

“The coffee?” he asks with a glance at his mug. “Just the smell of it?”

“Certain smells are no good. I haven't been able to drink coffee all week. I'll be okay though.”

He turns, craning around, looking for a server. “I’ll get rid of it.”

“And I’m sort of tired. More than usual. That's actually what made me wonder if something was wrong with me.”

He waves at a server, who is clearly busy with something else, a stack of wrapped utensils in her arms. He lifts up his mug.

“Oh, you’re serious, aren't you? Jon, that’s okay. You don’t have to get rid of your coffee. Jon.”

“Can you grab this from me?” he asks loudly enough to get the server to come over to them.

Too loud. Like he doesn't have control of the volume of his voice.

“Sorry,” Sansa says to the woman before he can even make his request again. “We don’t mean to bother you.”

“No problem. You need a warm up? Or did you need your server?”

“We're good. Thank you. We could use a few minutes before we order? But he’s finished with his coffee. If you wouldn’t mind clearing it for us. Sorry,” she says again.

How she’s managing that endless dance of politeness and apology right now is beyond him. He's ready to push the mug into the woman's arms and bundle Sansa out the door, so he can talk to her in private. If he could get her alone, he could somehow figure out if she's really okay, because there's no way this isn't an act.

 _God_.

With his mug still held out, he looks across the table at her. Maybe she does look different. Paler than usual. It just makes him want to hold her even more.

The server takes the mug from him, peering down into it. “Was it not okay? Can I get your server to bring you something else? Bloody Mary maybe?”

“No, thanks,” he says with a grimace.

Now's the time to actually practice some sober solidarity.

The woman gives them a flat smile, turning her back on them with his mug awkwardly clutched alongside the wrapped utensils.

“You didn’t have to get rid of your coffee like that.”

“And make you sick?”

“Then you should have gotten that cocktail. Drink your breakfast like a champion. I’d have one if I could.”

It’s literally the least he can do, abstaining. She ordered him coffee even though the smell would make her sick. She can't stop doing things for others. Meanwhile, he didn’t even manage to be here for when she found out. He promised he’d be here for her— _next time_ —so she wouldn't have to be alone.

That next time ended up coming pretty damn quick on the heels of her confession their attempt was a failure. All it took him was just a few minutes to make a mess of her well-planned _next time_.

“When did you find out?”

She traces the handle of her butter knife with her index finger, worrying it up and down. “Right before I asked you to meet me for coffee yesterday. I didn’t want to say in a text or over the phone. It's an in person thing, I figured.”

He reaches across the table and seizes her hand, stopping her fidgeting. He squeezes—hard. “I’ll make it up to you. You don't have to do whatever comes next alone.”

“It’s not like you planned to be away. I could have called, I guess. It was just weird,” she says, wrinkling her nose, “with Robb being with you.”

Here he was worried about their flirtatious texts being under scrutiny. A botched paternity announcement really would have been something.

“Yeah. Shit. This is my fault.”

“No, I distinctly remember telling you it would be okay.”

He remembers it too. It's featured in his fantasies ever since, which suddenly feels totally out of line.

“And I took the same biology class as you did. Mrs. Mordane? I think we can share the blame here.”

He rubs his thumb over the ridge of her knuckles, eyes darting away and back, as a server passes by. “I fucked things up for you—”

She covers their clasped hands with her other hand. “This is what we were trying to do anyway, right?”

“No,” he says, fumbling. No, there’s a vast difference between accidentally getting the girl you like—really fucking like—pregnant and a friend agreeing to be a sperm donor. “Not hardly, Sans.”

She slips her hands free of his grip, and he follows the path of her fingers up, as she tucks her hair behind her ears. “Please don’t panic.”

“You're right. What do we do? What do you um... want me to do?”

“That's sweet, but I’m not trying to blow your life up.”

There was something like a them a few weeks ago, which he's been replaying in his head almost non-stop since it happened. Now there’ll be a baby. Everything has changed, and they can’t afford to make an even bigger mess of it. He has to protect her from the consequences of their actions. He has to do _something_.

He picks the ceramic sugar container up and sets it back down. He flexes his hand. “I’ve blown both our lives up.”

“No, it won't be like that. Okay? I’m not asking anything of you.”

His hand flattens against the table.

He looks around the room again, people chatting, drinking coffee, and eating overly sweet breakfasts. People in business suits, moms in yoga gear, another couple in the corner. Crowded. It’s always crowded here. Whatever time, whatever day of the week, you've got to wait for a table, since they don't take reservations. There's nothing intimate or quiet about coming here for breakfast.

His heartbeat slows. He hears it, sluggish in his ears. He tries to swallow, but his mouth has gone dry.

“Sans, why are you telling me this here?”

She gives a little shrug.

 _Fuck_.

_Fuck fuck fuck._

This is starting to feel like a breakup. They weren’t even an official thing, and here she is, letting him down easy in a public place. He’s blown his shot with her, being careless.

_Suck it up._

“Okay, so you're not asking, but I'm here. So, what do you want me to do?”

He’ll do whatever she wants. Be the one to tell the Starks. Go along with some alternate version of what was going on between them, something that looks better from the outside. Pay for everything. Move in across the street or sleep on her sofa. Whatever she wants, he’ll give it to her. He just doesn't want her to be miserable because of him.

He manages to swallow around the lump in his throat and pats the table. “I want to do the right thing.”

She blinks. Slowly enough that it's almost flirtatious. But not. “I hope that’s not a marriage proposal.”

His face starts to flush from above the neck of his white t-shirt and spreading over his cheeks. It's voodoo how she sees right through him.

He _would_ marry her. Old-fashioned baby making, old-fashioned shotgun wedding. What his mom wanted and never got, when his father's wife answered the phone the night his mom realized she was pregnant with him.

She talks fast, papering right over his unspoken offer. “We don’t have to get hung up on how it happened. This doesn’t change anything. Right? I’ll still tell everyone I went the IVF route. Anonymous donor. You won’t get dragged into it. No one defending my honor. Nothing weird. I swear.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Wait. Sorry. Let me understand this.”

Her plan is to write him right out of the script.

She gives that same half-hearted shrug again. “I am fully prepared to do this. I already was, so you don’t have to worry.”

“But I got you pregnant, Sans. Fuck,” he says, dropping his head into his hand. “I can’t believe this.”

She shushes him, gently enough like she's sorry to have to do it, but has to, because he’s being too loud again. That was the whole point of telling him here, so he wouldn’t make a scene.

“Weren’t you always going to get me pregnant?” she asks, mouthing the last three words of her question.

With a specimen cup delivered in a lunch bag.

He laughs, a noiseless, mirthless huff that collapses his shoulders in. He shakes his head. “Yeah, no, I wasn’t supposed to be present when it happened. I was definitely there.”

“Yeah you were,” she says, throaty enough that it's an echo of their easy, spine tingling flirty thing.

The thing that got them in this position.

She smiles at him, her face looking so vulnerable and open that he feels it square in his chest. “You did offer to stay for the turkey baster portion, so we could watch Netflix.”

“I'm a real gentleman.”

“I know. The best, right? And I just need you to know I really want this.”

The baby.

It shouldn't be like this. He could have told her from the start that he liked her. But that seemed selfish, regrettable timing. Wishing he would have spoken the fuck up is even more selfish, considering this is what she's been wanting. They could have gone round and round trying to do it artificially and never ended up being successful.

He nods. It's all he can manage for a moment.

“So, we'll just move on. We were never going to tell.” She looks up at the beamed ceiling. “At least, not any time soon. Won't have to worry about the baby asking questions for a while.”

Jon's not sure when he first asked his mom why he didn't have a dad. Young though. Really young. He got a cleaned up version of things for a long time. This kid will get the IVF story, however you spin that to a three year old.

“I just forget its mine? Pretend?”

It was always going to be hard. Having a thing for her, he knew that. This is worse.

“If you want,” she says.

He sees the flash of pain in her eyes, and he hates this place and the table between them. Hates everything about how he can't do the only thing he wants to do.

He leans towards her, trying to swallow up the distance, as he lowers his voice. “Honey, that's not what I want.”

“Okay. Uncle Jon maybe? I’d love for you to be a godparent like we talked about. Whatever feels right. And if you want to move on with your life, I understand.”

She sounds wrong. Tinny and rehearsed. Letting him off scot-free. Without any consequences, save for what he'll feel every time he looks at her or the baby.

There was a plan in place, where she ended up getting to be a mom without some self-obsessed guy getting in the way. All he did was complicate her plans by losing control of himself with her leg wrapped around his hip and her nails digging into his back.

He can’t pay her back for that momentary lapse of judgment by making demands on her.

“Still just DNA,” he says, sounding bitter in spite of himself.

She pushes her menu away. He doesn't think they'll be sharing doughnuts.

“Yeah. That's all it was. We got carried away is all.”

He sits back in his chair, stretches out one leg, and nods. “Is that what it was?”

For three weeks, he'd let himself believe it was something else.

Her lips part and close, and her eyes drift away from the table, fixing on something in the kitchen. “I don’t know.”

He frowns. She's been pretty composed. He doesn't buy it and she's being too accommodating, but she's kept herself together shockingly well. Suddenly, however her edges seem like they're fraying. Nostrils thinning and shoulders creeping up, she looks like she might start to cry.

He's got a sinking feeling he misjudged that night. Right from the moment he asked to kiss her.

“Hey, was I taking advantage that night?”

She shakes her head quick. “Advantage?”

“You were upset. Really upset. Was I wrong to do what I did?”

She looks at him sidelong, tears welling in her eyes. “I was into it, Jon.”

His heart skips hard. “Christ.”

“As I’m pretty sure you’re aware.” She wipes with a crooked index finger under her eye. “We’re adults though. We can be friends and not get stuck on one night.”

“A night and a morning.”

She wipes under the other eye, teeth showing as she sighs. “Well, if you hadn’t been so good the first time around I wouldn't have thrown myself at you in the morning.”

Normally, something like that, particularly from the girl he's falling for, would be the ultimate turn-on. It'd be an invitation. It'd be his opening to offer they wrap this up and head back to her place.

Instead, he feels like he's having a heart attack. Because it's a kiss-off, and he has to suck it up and be there for her in whatever distant way she wants, while forgetting about anything he hoped might happen between them.

“I’m uh… thrown for a loop here, so I hope you'll forgive me.”

“I cried for an hour, when I found out. So, all things considered, you’re doing better than me.”

“You cried,” he says, raking his hand through his hair.

He wants to pull, yank hard, so he feels something other than this heart racing dread. He hates the thought of her crying, and it's his fault, no matter what she says about it.

“I’ve never felt totally terrified and happy at the same time.”

He does it again, pulling his fingers through his hair, as he exhales hard. “You swear you’re happy?”

He'll do it, he'll forget the rest if she's happy.

“It's different, but I’m happy it’s you still. With you. The baby. You know what I mean?” she asks, without any of her usual clarity.

But he gets it, and it's still flattering. It just hurts now. A lot.

He lets his hand drop and reaches across the table. She looks at his upturned hand, hesitating.

“It’s what I wanted. What I really wanted. To be a mom.”

“Okay. I'm not going to fuck it up for you, Sans.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, fitting her hand into his.

Whatever it is, she doesn't need to apologize. He knows how it is, being a single mom, and she has to do what's best for her and the baby, and he has to be a man about it.

“It'll all be fine. And you'll be awesome. ”


	7. Whatever You Need

Jon holds the glass door for Sansa, his fingers grazing the small of her back as she walks through into the practice. He takes her purse without her asking, just sticks his hand out, when the receptionist tells her to go on back to the bathroom and leave her urine sample. And he’s sitting in the brightly lit waiting area, when she comes out, head down, one leg balanced on his knee, and reading something on his phone.

Dependable. Gentle.

The receptionist hands her a clipboard and pen and asks her to fill out some forms, says there might be a wait, because the OB had surgery this morning but the nurse will call her in a little while, and he looks up from his phone just as she presses the clipboard to her middle. He tucks the phone in his back pocket and lifts her purse off the teal colored chair next to him, making room for her.

Thoughtful. Handsome.

She can keep ticking things off mentally, running him through the checklist in her mind, the pointless mental audition she needs to stop but can’t quite.

She knows how it must look—to the receptionist, the middle-aged couple with a toddler hanging on the man’s leg and the woman looking ready to pop, and the young woman and her mom over in the corner. And she likes it way more than she should, the appearance of things. It gives her a fluttery feeling that for once is not the weird, constant low-level nausea that sends her digging in her pantry for Saltines and 7-Up. They present a certain picture, especially since Jon continues, despite the altered circumstances, to be attentive. Outside of today, in this office, she hasn’t been able to indulge this kind of outward fantasy. But here, there’s no need to conceal that she’s pregnant or that Jon’s the father and no need to let anyone know he’s not actually hers.

She slides her hand over the back of her dress, as she sits down beside him, easing into the chair as the synthetic leather cushion deflates. She likes the feel of his arm draped over the back of her chair too, the press of it across her shoulder blades a steady comfort, as she adjusts the clipboard in her lap.

His thumb traces the outside of her bicep.

“Cold?” he asks, hand closing around her arm.

It is chilly in here, the way doctors offices tend to be super-cooled in the summer, but that’s not why her skin is breaking out in goosebumps.

She’s not feeling totally gross today, which should be a relief, but it’s easier to forget how much she wants to kiss him, when she thinks she might throw up.

“I’m okay.”

It’s not just the distraction of his mouth, bothering her. Even a good day is cause for worry now. Could be a drop in hormones—not a good sign.

She’s been nervous about her appointment. Google has been her best friend. It’s also freaked her out more than once, googling every twinge and weird symptom in the few weeks since she discovered she was pregnant. Internet searches fully informed her about what to expect today. Urine sample, blood work, weight check. Meet with her OB. The OB will use a Doppler and then she’ll have her first ultrasound. It’s all completely routine, but she’s been worried the past two days that there won’t be a heartbeat or it won’t be a uterine pregnancy. Worst case scenario stuff.

Then Jon showed up at her place—ten minutes early, she saw him through the window, waiting in the truck—and won’t stop being sweet, and she just wants to crawl into his lap.

“I’ve got a jacket in the truck if you need it.”

She nods, as he rubs her arm. “Thanks. I’m good for now.”

The forms—if she focuses on the forms, she’ll stop thinking about turning into him and threading her fingers in his hair. He just keeps acting like such a good boyfriend, like the kind of guy you wouldn’t hate to be having a baby with even unplanned.

Only, if he was her boyfriend, they wouldn’t be pretending they never slept together. That is exactly what they’ve been doing for weeks now. It’s a convenient delusion. Helpful in keeping herself from falling any harder for him. Actually, not only would she not have to pretend if they were really dating, she’d also get to sleep with him again, which might be fun, since she doesn’t feel like death warmed over today.

 _God_. It was good sex. The second time even better than the first, which makes her wonder if it would just keep getting better and if there’s an endpoint to that sort of trajectory.

She’s had a lot of bad sex. She’s more of an expert in that variety unfortunately. Maybe for him that was perfectly average sex.

The thought makes her feel stupid.

She bites her lip, flipping up the first sheet on the clipboard in her lap and letting it fall back. She twirls the pen with the large fake sunflower attached with copious amount of washi tape between her thumb and forefinger, scanning what they need to know. Some of this is already filled out with the information she inputted on the medical portal. But there’s a whole big chunk that’s blank.

Stuff like this will crop up. Stuff that forces her to confront their reality. An actual anonymous donor would mean this would largely remain blank, although, she’d probably have some details provided by the clinic.

“Jon.”

He hums, leaning in.

“There’s a lot of family history questions here.” She points with the flower end of the pen at the father’s information. “What do you want me to do?”

“You want me to fill out my stuff?” he asks, saving her from actually asking him to do it.

“Do you mind?”

“No,” he says, unwrapping his arm from around her. “Let me see.”

She hands him the clipboard and pen. The pen is comical in his suddenly large looking hand, as he gives the form the same up and down once-over that she gave it.

“Should I write my name? Or just uh… fill in the rest?”

That protective part of her that formed like a shell after one bad relationship on the heels of another wants to say no, so it’s not actually committed to writing. But she chose Jon as a donor, knowing she could trust him. She knew he’d never do anything that would make her regret her choice. And then she slept with him because she trusted him too. That and he looked really good in that button-down and she wanted to straddle his firm thighs.

She sits back against the hard back of the chair. Her hormones are making her completely insane, she thinks, cheeks flushing red.

“I can skip it,” he says, glancing sidelong at her.

“No, put it down. Unless you don’t want to.”

He scribbles his name.

He fills in the next blank, bubbles something in, slowly working his way down the list, making everything so easy for her.

It could have gone down really differently. Just in case, she’d braced herself before their breakfast at Half & Half, gave herself a stern talking to, so she wouldn’t get hurt by a perfectly reasonable but unpleasant reaction from him. Too bad the nicer he is, the more she wants to backtrack on all her best-laid plans.

_Don’t ask too much of him, because you’ll push him away._

_Don’t think about how much you like him, because it’s not going to pan out like that._

_Don’t expect more than he agreed to from the start, because that’s not fair._

She touches his arm. “Thank you.”

Not just for willingly putting his name to a chart. He checks on her at least once a day, asking how she is. He offers to help her with stuff. Randomly, he brought over a box of popsicles the other night, in case they might help with her morning sickness. She sat cross-legged, eating a cherry one after he left, wishing he was sitting next to her. She could have asked. They had that weird moment, as he was leaving, where it was clear neither of them knew what to do. They have those moments a lot. It'd be understandable if he pulled back, considering, but he hasn't.

Even with this appointment, she didn’t have to ask for him to drive her or to come inside with her, he just offered. He’s been so great that it’s easy to forget she’s given him a pass to pretend like what happened between them never happened.

Of course, it’s more than she hoped for initially. She never imagined when she asked him to be a donor that he’d be carting her to appointments and talking her off the ledge about the latest thing she’s googled. It’s not everything she wants—she wants him, which she failed to realize, when she asked him to be a donor. But she’s not going to risk what they’ve got established as friends, trying for a romance with someone who probably has a very different type of life partner and plan in mind for himself.

The only reason he even slept with her was because he felt sorry for her and they’d gotten thrown into something emotionally by her asking him to be the donor. It’d led to a weird sort of intimacy that wouldn’t have developed otherwise.

No, he obviously wanted to have sex with her. He said he’d wanted to kiss her for a while. She remembers how he said, all throaty. The memory gives her the fluttery feeling too. It wasn’t just pity sex: he is attracted to her. She knew that much already. She’d traded on it in the past, when she wanted to feel the thrill of being desirable without that desire being remotely threatening.

“What are you going to tell your doctor?” he asks in a waiting room appropriate lowered voice. Low enough that it reminds her of his bedroom voice. “About me.”

She uncrosses and crosses her feet at the ankles. “Logistically how this happened?”

“Right. Not about my hobbies. Unless you think she’d be interested in my catching more trout than your brother in Canada,” he says, slowly leaning as he scribbles something until his shoulder bumps hers.

He knows she’s nervous, she thinks, swallowing. It’s painfully sweet, his trying to distract her. But until she hears the heartbeat, she doesn’t think she can really calm down.

“I think honesty is probably best in this case. I’d feel like a teenager, lying to my OB.”

“Right.”

“So, I'll tell her it was an oopsy,” she says, rolling her eyes at her infantile description of what passed between them.

He raises his brows at her and looks back to the forms.

She’ll have to warn her doctor that her family doesn’t know. She’ll want her mother in the delivery room. That would be monumentally bad timing if the truth came out there. Although, doctors probably don’t go around talking about that kind of stuff in delivery rooms anyway.

_Heard from the one-night stand who knocked you up, lately?_

That’s got to be a HIPAA violation, she thinks and bites her lip to keep herself from laughing.

“I’m totally happy to fill this out, but I’ve got blank spots in my family history. One whole side to be exact.”

“Oh, right,” she says, looking back down at the form, where he’s stopped his barely legible scrawl.

“Sorry. Not ideal, I know, for medical stuff.”

“No, that’s okay,” she says with a shake of her head.

She’s drawn comparisons between what life will be like for her baby and what life was like for Jon, when he was a kid. She’s put herself in Ms. Snow’s shoes, the only single mom she knew growing up. But she hasn’t considered this mundane detail—family history, the kind of information she takes completely for granted. One day, this baby, currently the size of a raspberry according to her pregnancy app, will have no idea what to fill in on one side of a medical form.

Except, Jon’s dad was a deadbeat, and the raspberry’s father is sitting beside her, bouncing a sunflower pen and looking at her with that worried look of his that makes her want to take care of him. If smells didn’t totally overwhelm her right now, she would have had something baked and waiting for him, when he arrived this morning.

One of her straps keeps slipping, and she straightens it on her shoulder, his eyes following the movement.

“We don’t have to let that happen, right? In our case.”

“No,” he says, tapping the head of the flower against the clipboard again. “I’ll give you a medical history you can keep. Me and my mom’s.”

“Good, that’ll be good.”

The pen stops bouncing. “And I’m not going anywhere, Sans. Whatever you need.”

His promise makes her heart speed, and she looks away from his serious grey eyes.

She fixes her gaze on the weird abstract art on the opposite wall. It’s the same purple and teal as the rest of the room. Is something like that commissioned? Did it come as a set with the chairs and the ceramic lamps?

Maybe she could make a wish list today of décor for the nursery if all is normal in the exam, while she's feeling good. Nothing teal. No purple. Sometimes scrolling on her laptop makes her feel sick to her stomach, but she really does feel good today. Better than she has in at least a week. Yesterday wasn’t super bad either. She was ready to ask her OB about anti-nausea medication, but if she felt like this all the time, she wouldn’t need it.

It would be really strange for morning sickness to resolve this early though. Unless something is wrong.

“What if something bad happens?” she says, saying it aloud for the first time.

He runs his thumbnail over his lower lip. “In your appointment?”

“Yeah. What if something is wrong? I don’t feel sick today.”

“Didn’t you say that could just be hormones leveling out or something?” he asks, gesturing vaguely towards her middle.

You can’t see anything. The raspberry isn’t big enough. But she’s bloated in the evenings and looking in her full-length mirror, she can imagine the bloat is something else. She’s attached to the raspberry.

“Didn’t this kind of happen a week ago?” he asks, uncrossing his leg. He sinks down in the chair, until their heads are on the same level. “You feeling better? And you got worried then too.”

“Yeah, but something could be wrong this time. Then what?”

“Then we’ll figure it out,” he says, eyes searching hers.

She takes a deep breath and tries to smile.

“I’m sure you’ll be back to feeling terrible tomorrow. Ask about that medicine.”

“It's on the list. I’ve got a whole list of things I want to ask printed out in my purse.”

“That’s my girl,” he says, handing over the clipboard.

She wants to be his girl, which is messy. Inadvisably so. The smart thing for her sanity probably would be to ask someone else to take her to these appointments, establish some boundaries, but he’s the one she wants here. If something were to be wrong, she wouldn’t want to have to come out to Mya in the waiting room.

So many things could go wrong.

“Maybe I should ask for the genetic testing.”

“What’s that?”

“Blood test. My insurance won’t pay for it though,” she says, thinking out loud, as she pulls the clipboard to her chest.

She’s saving as much as she can, and the test would be another expense.

“If you want the test, get it. I’ll pay for it.”

She points her toe in her sandals. The fluttery feeling makes her restless and sitting here, she has nowhere to go with that giddy energy.

She should assure him that’s unnecessary. Politely refuse the help, but a thought has set up residence in the front of her mind, and she bites her lip, looking at him, wondering whether she should say it. She mentally traces his profile. What it might look like in a little boy—that chin and those lips. What his long lashes might look like on a girl.

“The results tell you the gender too. Early. Much earlier.”

“Oh yeah?” he holds out the pen, rolling it between his fingers before she takes it. The polyester petals flutter like her stomach. “That’d be fun.”

“I think so. Not just morning sickness and anxiety then for the first trimester.”

He frowns. “I do kinda feel like that’s my fault.”

“Hormones are to blame, Jon. Not you specifically.”

“Uh huh,” he says, sounding unconvinced. “Well, the guy should have to puke too.”

“Don’t say that word. Just the word,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

She tries not to picture the toilet bowl she’s become all too acquainted with from a view she doesn’t relish.

He grimaces. “Sorry.”

She bops his arm with the sunflower. “Would you want to know? What it’s going to be? Boy or girl?”

“Definitely. I mean, I shook my presents on Christmas Eve. You,” he says, tilting his head towards her, “probably waited, huh?”

“Yeah, I waited. Arya, on the other hand, peeled all the tape off to peek and then put it back.”

“Of course, she did.”

“Mama knew,” she says, dragging the flower over his forearm, up and back.

She weirdly likes the veins in his forearm. She liked holding tight to his biceps too, when he was inside her. She curls her toes in her sandal.

She moves the pen over his arm more quickly, like an eraser for that inconveniently timed image. “Even if it is like peeking on Christmas Eve, I want to know what it is.”

“So, you can plan?”

“Yes,” she says bopping him again, equally parts annoyed that he knows that and pleased he gets her. “But I also just don’t think I could wait. Knowing the information was out there, you know?”

“My friend Sam? They didn’t find out. He said Gilly says it’s the last real surprise in life.”

She’d forgotten Jon’s friend had a baby. It really shouldn’t matter, but it feels like a relief to know he’s not the first person he knows to have one. Like maybe something will rub off and he’ll be really interested in the baby. As interested as he’s been in being kind to her about the pregnancy.

Or maybe is she just waits and is patient and he doesn’t find anyone in the meantime, maybe everything will just fall into place with them.

 _Nope_.

That’s the kind of thinking that will end with her heart broken.

“Do you want to know with this one?” she asks, sliding the pen into the clip of the clipboard so she stops dragging it over his body. “Would you like me to tell you?”

“What other baby did you think I was talking about?” he asks, his mouth quirking.

“I don’t know.”

A hypothetical baby. One he might have some day in the future. Intentionally. With a partner.

Her stomach lurches.

She pulls the clipboard in tight to herself.

“You don’t want to do one of those gender reveal things?”

She drums her nails against the fiberboard. “Where people get blown up?”

He makes a face. “Is that a regular feature?”

She looks down at her nails. There’s a chip in her index finger. She angles it in the light, so it becomes more and less obvious, depending.

“I’d rather just be private about it. At first. If you are interested.”

“Do you mean, tell me first, or—”

“Yeah. Let you shake the present,” she says, shrugging her shoulders, because she can’t stop saying stupid things to him.

He rests his hand on her thigh, rubs his thumb over the seersucker fabric of her dress, and squeezes. She feels it like a catch in her chest.

“If you want a party too,” he says, turning his head enough to whisper into her ear, “I’ll make sure to look surprised _and_ make sure no one gets blown up.”

She can’t fight her smile. She twists in the chair, so they’re almost nose to nose, making his eyes look huge.

“Do you have a preference? On what it’ll be?”

He probably wants a boy. It would make sense, him wanting a boy. Someone to take fishing. That kind of thing. He could take a girl fishing too, but he'll want a boy.

“Either way, Sans, I’ll take them to their first baseball game.”

She whips her head around, staring forward, a burning in the back of her throat and eyes warning that her hormones are ready to embarrass her.

 _Stop_.

She doesn’t want to cry in this waiting room. No one has been called back by the nurse since she sat down and they’ll all stare.

How does he do that? Say exactly the thing she wants? For Jon and the baby. For all of them.

“Hey,” he says, giving her leg a jostle, “it’ll be okay.”

If she looks at him, she'll lose the fight. She wants him to fold her in his arms. Kiss her. All the things she wanted at Half & Half, which is precisely why she chose a public place, where she couldn't give in to those messy wants and really mess her life up and place him in a terrible position.

She leans into him until her head rests on his shoulder, drawn in by the thud of her heart. He smells minty. Like toothpaste and men's deodorant. He's shockingly warm in this chilly office too. She really could crawl right into his lap.

Reaching up, he presses his hand to her cheek. Her eyes drift closed, as he kisses the crown of her head.

There aren't any boundaries that can save her. It's too late.

“Don’t be nervous about the appointment, Sans. Everything will be fine.”


	8. Whatever You Want

Three girls approach the bar, elbowing in close to Jon. He leans to the right on his stool, closer to Robb, so they can wave down the bartender. The one closest to him grabs his arm for balance, teetering on heels.

There are plenty of regular’s at Rosie’s, the only bar in the Central West End that isn’t snooty, but not everyone is a regular or even a local. Jon’s not exactly a regular, but he comes here for a few Stag beers with Robb every few weeks and has done as much ever since Robb moved into the neighborhood. These girls definitely are not regulars and they’ve all had plenty to drink judging by the level of their voices and the jostling he’s getting from the blonde.

“They’re cute,” Robb says, raising his brows.

Jon looks sidelong at Robb, slowly spinning the beer glass in the condensation on the bar, as he’s jarred once more and the girl shouts her apologizes, bending close to his ear. He winces. If he wasn’t a little drunk himself, it’d be worse.

She’s just inside his slightly narrowed field of vision, dressed too nice for Rosie’s like the pack she’s a part of are bachelorettes, who have wandered into the wrong bar. Blue eyes, tan, pretty smile that she keeps flashing down at him. He glances up at the other two. Robb’s not wrong: they’re cute. Probably Sansa’s age. Maybe a year or two younger, which also makes them a touch young for the usual Rosie’s crowd.

She squeezes his shoulder, and Jon gives her a tight-lipped smile, turning back to his beer. It’s his third one and there are only a few swallows left. His eyes flick up to the bartender, as he contemplates a fourth.

“I’m not that drunk.”

“Why would you need to be drunk?” Robb lifts his chin at the girls. “I could be your wingman.”

Jon is a terrible wingman. Robb being naturally easy with girls is more than decent. If he was interested, it's a good enough offer of help.

Jon taps his middle finger against the glass. He can’t hear the ring of the glass in the din of the place with two televisions going, the jukebox playing, and a chorus of drunk voices.

“Not tonight.”

Robb shrugs, lifting his beer up. “Does that mean you're seeing somebody? Forgot to mention it?”

Jon reverses the direction he spins the glass. His fingers aren’t as adept at counter-clockwise and the glass tips. He rights it well before what's left spills. Full and it would have been a different story.

“No. Single.”

“You into someone?”

“I don’t know.” He grimaces: he should have shut that down immediately. He lifts his beer, takes a sip. It’s not cold anymore. Fooling with the glass doesn’t help. “You know all I do is work.”

He works and he texts Sansa. He checks in on her. She's been feeling like shit for weeks and is constantly worried something bad is going to happen. It gets him nervous too, though he does his best not to let on. He’s tried to help out, tried to be a distraction or a comfort. He’s run errands for her and dropped by with stuff he thought she might need. Sometimes, unadvisedly, he flirts and then stares at his phone until she flirts back. But his romantic feelings for her have to take a backseat to being supportive, so he doesn’t maneuver himself right out of the kid’s life by making Sansa uncomfortable with his unwanted attraction. It’s complicated. He’s dealing.

It’s cool, totally cool that he’s never going to fuck her again. He never fucking thinks about it.

He pushes his hand through his hair, letting his head hang down.

 _Totally fucking cool_.

Robb swivels on the stool, knees splayed wide, and fixes him with a look.

Jon flattens his hand against the bar, pushes himself back upright, trying not to look like a sad drunk. Maybe then Robb will stop staring.

Robb hasn’t had three beers—he’s still nursing his second—and the way Robb’s squinting at him like he’s seeing through his thin act, it’s clear he’s unfairly sober by comparison. This is not the time to be having this conversation with him. Jon needs to be more with it.

“Is it my sister?”

Jon tries not to twitch. It’s not the tone—Robb’s tone is inexplicably casual—it’s just the accuracy that’s the punch in the gut. Sansa doesn’t want anyone knowing. But if Robb's caught on, he's already failing at keeping the secret twelve weeks in to the pregnancy.

There has to be an easy way out of this. Sansa would wave it all away with an easy laugh.

His throat feels thick. _Fuck_.

Jon frowns hard. “I don’t have the hots for Arya, man. Come on.” He picks his beer up, swallows two big slugs, nearly emptying it, and lifts his finger for the bartender. He sees him right away, which is a relief: he needs that fourth one. “Christ,” he says, setting the glass back down too hard. “She might as well be _my_ sister.”

Robb kicks his boot out, making contact with the lowest rung on Jon’s stool. Jon feels it in his clenched teeth.

“ _Sansa_.”

“Marginally less unlikely,” Jon mumbles, as the bartender grabs for a clean glass.

“I don’t know. Jeyne thought there was something going on with you guys.”

The bartender side-steps towards the tap. He’s older. Not selected for his good looks to sell drinks. That's not the goal here.

“That night? When we all went to dinner,” Robb presses, while Jon watches the pale beer flow into the glass. “The time before last.”

Sansa didn’t join them for their most recent group dinner. Her morning sickness was too bad before she got the anti-nausea prescription. His instinct was to skip too, make up an excuse, since she wasn’t up to it. Even if they weren't together, it felt wrong to go have a good time with the Starks without her. At her insistence, he went but his head was elsewhere. He kept texting her under the table until Arya scowled at him and demanded to know who was more important than them.

“In Clayton?” Jon offers like he doesn’t remember exactly the dinner Robb’s referring to.

“Yeah,” Robb says, leaning his elbow into the bar. “That's the one. Billie-Jean, right?”

“Thanks,” Jon says to the bartender, as he puts his fresh Stag down in front of him.

This one’s cold, as he wraps his hand around it. Cold going down too. Helps loosen that constricted feeling in his chest.

“That was months ago,” he finally says on a swallow.

If Robb would be curious, Jon knows precisely how many weeks ago they had dinner at Billie-Jean, because for the first time in his life, he tells time in weeks. Weeks since last period. Not conception. That’s some shit he wouldn’t have known before.

“I don’t know if you remember. Jeyne wanted to set you up with someone from work. She was _hot_. Really hot.”

“I remember.”

The image of Jeyne's friend is indistinct, unlike the rest of the night.

But it's cool. It's cool that he can't forget what Sansa felt like under his tongue, what she tasted like.

His nostrils flare.

“She was sure you guys were into each other or messing around or something. Went on and on about it on the way home. I didn’t mention it in Waterton, because I didn't want it to ruin our week, but that and the texting with you two. Kind of questionable.”

Jon reaches up to scratch the bridge of his nose with his thumbnail, keeping his eyes forward.

There’s the requisite Budweiser neon sign behind the bar, a must in a bar in this town. There’s a Camel one too, although it’s been a couple of years since you could smoke inside a bar. Probably qualifies as nostalgia now. Jon can feel the pack of cigarettes in the back pocket of his jeans. The only time he smokes anymore is when he’s out drinking, so long as there aren’t girls around. He could go for a cigarette. It’d steady his nerves.

The beer will have to do, he thinks, picking it back up.

“Uh, you know, we’d been hanging out with my taking her stuff to the craft fairs.”

Robb pulls a face like he’s fighting a smile. “You kept doing that? I thought that was like once.”

“Yeah. No, for a while,” he says, swiping condensation off the bar with his palm. “I mean, she doesn’t have a car. So, what the fuck was she supposed to do? Her pillows are bulky. Fill a booth with them and you've got a truck bed worth of stuff.”

“Right. No, I get it. Craft shows though?”

“That’s her art. That’s how she gets it out there. I could be doing the same thing if I hadn’t gotten my break with the Mormonts.”

The Mormonts know everyone in town. Once he got their business, the orders started rolling in from all over the city. The best kind of people, the best kind of businesses.

“What you do and what she does aren’t the same.”

“How do you figure?” he demands with too much edge in his voice. Jon takes a swallow, aware that his friend is staring at him again like he's an idiot. “She’s selling on Etsy now. No more shows.”

Robb turns back into the bar, rests both elbows on the lip, and tips his beer enough to stare down into it. “She’s dated some _really_ shitty guys.”

“Fucking Joff.”

They don’t run in the same circles, which is probably a lucky thing for the privileged little shit. Jon would absolutely give him the beat down he deserves if he got the chance.

“Fucking Joff,” Robb agrees with equal venom.

“Harry,” Jon says, pointing a finger at Robb.

That one was on him: she wouldn’t have met Harry if Robb and Harry hadn’t been in Sigma Chi together.

“Asshole,” Robb says, nodding as he brings the beer to his mouth.

“Cheater,” Jon qualifies, because there are all sorts of assholes, but Harry was the cheating kind and he can still see how that affects Sansa.

Robb rocks on his stool. The seats are hard, not shaped right to be comfortable for long stretches. Rosie’s isn’t the type of place that cares about well-designed stools though.

“Loras wasn’t bad,” Robb says with a half-hearted lift of one shoulder.

“Seriously?” Jon says, balling up his wet bar napkin.

“He was okay. He won us state that year.”

“Whoop-de-fucking-doo.” He tosses the napkin towards the far edge of the bar. “Sansa wasn’t thrilled to find out she was his beard.”

“There was that. Although,” Robb says, swinging his head around to grin at Jon, “means you’ve still got a leg up on that handsome s.o.b.”

He’s probably just fucking around, trying to get a rise out of Jon. Still, it makes him want to smack Robb in the chest. Tell him to fuck off. A reaction that would lend too much credence to Jeyne’s much too accurate woman’s intuition.

“While I appreciate the compliment, you’re cut off,” Jon says, reaching over to scoot Robb’s beer away. “I’m cut off too,” he says, though he’s only halfway done with his beer. “I’m going to Uber home. Is Jeyne coming for you?”

Robb pats the bar. “Yep. She stayed in tonight. Was worn out from work.”

“Come on,” Jon says, slipping off the stool. “Text her while I have a smoke.”

In college, he would have chain smoked his way through a party. Now it’s one or two outside the bar after the night is done, less if the Uber driver gets there quick enough. It tastes so damn good after a bunch of cheap beers though. Like youth.

Fumbling for the pack in his pocket, the threshold of Rosie's entrance trips him up. Not enough to stumble, but enough to realize, despite the cool late September evening air in his face and seeping through his t-shirt, that he drank that last beer a little too fast. Probably put him over the line from buzzed into actually drunk. Definitely an Uber night, despite the fact that it will cost a small fortune to get him back home.

They walk halfway down the block, Jon lagging behind Robb, as Robb fools with his phone and Jon pulls a cigarette from the crushed pack.

Robb's got it good, living close. Anytime they go out, it's in Clayton or the Central West End or Brentwood. There's nothing out his way, except roadside diners serving mile high pies and fast food joints, and no one is making the drive for that.

Jeyne lives in the same building as Robb. It’s how they met. Bumping into each other at the mailboxes or something. The elevator maybe. Jon gets the feeling there’s not a whole lot of reason for them to have two apartments at this point. They got serious fast. But Mr. and Mrs. Stark wouldn’t love it if Robb officially moved a girl in after a few months of dating. They're the kind of parents who are super supportive, but also not afraid to tell their kids that they think they're screwing shit up.

They’d love Sansa getting pregnant by him under pretty questionable circumstances even less.

Jon nearly drops his silver lighter. He overcompensates, arm flailing out to stop its descent to the pavement. He laughs to himself, flicking the top and bringing it up to his face.

Sansa has not told anyone yet that she's expecting. At twelve weeks, she can still hide it. Though maybe not for much longer. She's slim. Any change is pretty obvious.

“You want one?” he asks around the cigarette.

“Jeyne would string me up if I got in her car smelling of smoke.”

Jon breathes in until the end glows, flicks the lighter shut, and slides it back in his pocket. 

“She’ll be here in a sec,” Robb says, gesturing with his phone. “You sure you’re good to Uber home? You could crash with me.”

He'll save Jeyne from the imposition of an unwanted visitor in Robb's apartment.

He exhales to the side, so he doesn’t still manage to end up on the wrong side of Jeyne for stinking up her boyfriend. “Naw, I’m fine.”

“It’s a trek. Offer stands.”

Jon scuffs the rubber sole of his sneaker against the concrete. “I’m getting too old to sleep on couches. I wake up feeling like I was run over by a truck.”

“I slept funny a couple days ago. Thought I was going to die.”

“I’ll probably have a headache tomorrow anyway if I don’t drink some water. My tolerance is shot.”

A couple walks by them, and Jon steps closer to the curb out of their way. He takes a drag on his cigarette, as Robb twists, hands shoved in his pockets, probably already looking for his girlfriend’s car. Must be nice.

Wherever they are in life, Jon always seems to wish he had what Robb has. Then, because he loves Robb like a brother, he feels guilty for ever feeling that way.

“You always going to live out in the country like that?” Robb asks, rocking on his heels

“Probably. Don’t you miss it?”

They were all country kids. They shared the same almost idyllic childhood running through corn fields and skipping stones in ponds.

“Yeah, sometimes. When I do, I can always go home. It’s just convenient here, and Jeyne isn’t going to want to move out far.”

“Planning that far out?”

“Yeah, I think I am.”

Jon got that sense, but it's the first time Robb's intimated as much.

What would Sansa want? She was the first to move away. She had one foot out of the county before they'd even graduated high school.

Being with her feels like coming home. But they’re different kinds of people, and they obviously want different things. She made that pretty clear, when she found out she was pregnant with his baby.

Jon takes another drag and blows up. There's no point looking up at the sky though: you can't see one damn star in the city.

“I’m not a city guy.”

“Well, country mouse, I’m not busy tomorrow. I can pick you up sometime, so you can get your truck.”

“Thanks, man. I might take you up on that.”

Robb frowns. Looks down at the sidewalk and back up. “Are you miserable or good? I can’t tell anymore.”

 _Both_. Sometimes at the same time.

“I’m good.”

Robb rubs his chin.

Up the block, Jon sees a black Kia Optima turn the corner. “Hey, is that Jeyne’s car?”

“Yeah,” Robb says, twisting to look. He thumps Jon on the back, hard enough to rock Jon forward on his just a hair unsteady legs. “Thanks for coming out, man.”

The car pulls up to the curb and Jeyne’s head appears in the passenger side window, as she ducks down to wave at Jon. He holds the cigarette out away from Robb and waves back, as his friend grabs the door handle. He pulls, stops with the door ajar, and turns enough to give Jon a one-eyed squint into the streetlight’s glow.

“I’m going to say this one time. Shoot your shot. I think you’d be good for her.”

The car door closes. Jeyne puts her signal on and pulls away, engine revving and then getting harder to hear, as the distance grows between them. Jon stares after them long after the car has disappeared.

He drops his cigarette, stubs it out with the toe of his shoe, and pulls his phone out. It recognizes his face in spite of the grimace he makes at the slippery thing. The Uber app prompts him: _Where to?_

And that’s the million-dollar question.


	9. I Just Want To Touch You

Jon’s limbs are just barely under his control, as he peels himself out of the backseat of the Uber, gripping the frame of the car to haul himself out. He thanks the guy and shuts the door too hard. Looking down at his phone, he tries to open up his texts, as he drives off. He has to stop, stand in place, so he doesn’t trip over his own feet. He opens FaceTime by accident first, but then gets his messages open. Their conversation is on top.

He closes one eye, reading his last two messages to Sansa.

_Are you away?_

_I’m close can I come over_

Fucking drunk texting. He hopes she wasn’t lying that she was up. Her blinking ellipsis appeared quickly enough after he sent his message. Best be the truth, because he’ll be a real asshole if he’s come over here with some drunken plan in mind for a declaration or a seduction of a pregnant woman he just woke up. He’s here now though, and he’s really primed to see her, buzzing with the urge to see her and touch her.

He pads over to her door, one-handedly texting. The phone tilts in his hand and he hits the send arrow before he means to.

_Outsuse_

He grunts and tries again, thumb sliding awkwardly over the glass.

_Outside_

He doesn’t get his fist up to the door before it opens and she’s there, pulling her hair over her shoulder with a sweep of her hand.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

She’s so damn pretty. Face open and sweet. He leans his forearm against the doorframe, moving into her space. They’ve been here like this before, when he was handing over a specimen. He should have just pulled her in then, kissed her the way he wanted to.

She hangs on the doorframe too, close enough to heft up in his arms and carry her inside.

Her eyes scan him, as she lifts her hand to cup his face. She tilts her head, contemplating him with some bemusement. “You’re drunk.”

“Buzzed, I think,” he says, sinking into one hip to get more on her level.

With a wrinkle of her nose, she arcs her thumb over his cheek. She smudges his bottom lip, and he catches it, nipping.

“Mmm... don't know about buzzed. Your eyes are glassy.”

He turns his face into her palm. “Are they?” he asks, with a kiss to her palm.

“And you stink.”

Her morning sickness. _Fuck_.

“Sorry.” He bats at his hair. “You want me to shower?”

Her lips purse and her brows arch high. “Do you even know what time it is?”

“Not exactly.”

Pulling her hand back to play with the buttons at the neck of her pajamas, she peers around him.

“Hey, where are you going?” he asks, and she bites her lower lip like she’s trying not to laugh.

“Nowhere.”

“Well, too far still,” he says, snaking a hand out for her hip.

She’s dressed for bed. Maybe not asleep but possibly curled up in that bed of hers with the white sheets and the woven headboard that her hands pressed against, while he kissed the soft inside of her thighs. Which he can almost see in the sleep shorts she’s wearing. The shorts are really short. Short shorts with bears. He squints: black bears drinking coffee. He disturbs the hem of them with his index finger.

“I like your bear shorts.”

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“No. I’m responsible, Sans.”

“I know you are,” she says all sing-song and comforting.

He thought he’d impress her with his mammoth responsibility, never drinking and driving—total dad material. Doesn't seem to have done the trick.

He might have gotten drunker in the car. 

She steps back and he steps forward, following her over the threshold.

“Were you on a date?” she asks with a sniff.

“What? No.” He slips his hand around her waist and pulls her in with a tug. She goes so easily: head tucked into the crook of his neck and hands wrapped around his back. He smells the top of her head. Girls smell so good. He swears even with his eyes closed he could pick her out in a room. His hand slides up her back, taking her tank halfway with it. “I was at Rosie’s with Robb. Talking about you.”

She says his name again, drawn out and breathy. He feels it all up his spine like a caress. It sounds like how she said it with the sheets bunched underneath them.

He threads his hand through her hair. It’s thick and strands catch, as he moves his fingertips over her scalp. He thought he wanted to kiss her before. He had no idea how bad he’d want to kiss her after they agreed not to again. He wants to kiss her until she’s gasping under his mouth and writhing against him. He wants to slide his hand under her little shorts and carry her to bed. His whole body is hanging on the anticipation of the soft press of her mouth against his.

Her shoulders give a heave and then another. Like silent hiccups. The feeling of her jerking against him cuts through the fog of his arousal. He grabs her shoulders and shifts her back enough to look down at her.

With most the lights off in her apartment and his silhouette blocking the light from the street, he didn’t see it before. He does now: red rimmed eyes, cheeks striped with tear tracks. She’s been crying. Before he ever showed up drunk on her doorstep.

“Honey. What’s wrong?”

He stretches out a hand, slaps her front door shut. It rattles, vibrating in the frame.

“Honey. Sans.” He grips her tighter.

“I had a bad night. I got the call this afternoon from the nurse about the genetics test.”

His brain starts to race, his poorly coordinated drunken muscles tense. He looked into it, the test he paid for out of pocket, so she would have the comfort of knowing. He can’t remember all the names. All the syndromes. Some so serious a pregnancy wouldn’t make it to term.

“Don’t freak out. Everything’s fine.”

He exhales hard. His arms wrap around her, drag her in. And then back again, unfolding to hold her out by the shoulders to make sure he didn’t misunderstand. “Wait. The baby’s okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Sorry,” she repeats, lips tipping up in a smile ready to bloom on her face.

“It’s okay.” He smooths one hand over her bare shoulder, dragging the strap and then placing it back where it belongs with trembling fingers. He wasn’t trying to undress her. “Christ, you scared me.”

Her chest rises and falls. “She told me the gender.”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna know?”

He cradles the back of her head, insinuating himself closer with a nod.

“It’s a girl.”

Heart already racing from the scare, the news is like a swelling crest in his chest, threatening to overwhelm him.

“A girl?”

She nods.

 _A girl_.

He crushes her to him. Her narrow shoulders and hips press against him, as he leans back, lifts her right off the ground. He takes one lurching step forward, as she laughs into his neck.

It’s like Christmas. Or his birthday. But one hundred times bigger, better. This is sharp joy like he’s never felt.

He slides her down his body, setting her back down on her bare feet. Heart pounding, arms trembling, he kisses her forehead, then rests his against hers. “Sansa, honey. My God.”

Her hands skim his torso, mapping his sides, down and then back up, making it difficult to catch his breath. His muscles jump under her touch.

“Jon, you really stink,” she says, biting her lip around a grin he can see from the vantage point of being nose to nose with her. “If I wasn’t on my medicine, I’d have just thrown up down your back.”

“Sorry,” he says, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and hauling it up. With the t-shirt halfway to his face, far enough that her hands trail over bare skin, he realizes giving it the sniff test is unnecessary. “I didn’t think about that before I had one.”

“It’s okay. You smell like college. Like beer and cigarettes.”

“Yikes.”

“I don't know. If I made candles, this would be what the college fragrance would smell like.” She gives his exposed stomach a whisper soft rub. “It’s kind of weirdly nostalgic. Just thank goodness for Diclegis, right?”

Every fluttery caress of her hand he feels like a tug in his gut.

He’s in love with her.

Of course, he’s attracted to her, he’s not an idiot. He keeps telling himself that he’s crazy about her, that he likes her so much. He tells himself that he’s falling for her. But it’s more than that: he’s in love. He’s painfully aware of how much, as her fingernails rasp the fabric of his t-shirt and trail over his skin and she looks up at him through her lashes, blue eyes searching his from something.

“You’re excited it’s a girl?” she asks, voice low and shy.

“I’ve got no words for it, honey.”

He kisses her temple, and she flattens her hand over where his heart hammers. He tilts his head down, until he can nudge her nose. Two gentle bumps. Standing together, sharing space in silence, he covers her hand with his, wraps his fingers around hers, and squeezes.

 _A little girl_.

He can picture her. He can picture holding her in one of those blankets Sansa used to make. Tiny and pink and his and hers. Suddenly it’s so much more real than before. She’ll be pretty like her mom, so long as his DNA doesn’t fuck things up. Smart as a whip. The first baby on the block to sit up or whatever babies do first.

“Thank you,” she says, nudging his nose back. “I needed that from someone. From you.”

She’s close enough that he feels the edge of her smile at the corner of his mouth. Close enough that he would barely need to turn his head to kiss her. He closes his eyes, breathing in.

“I’d gotten myself all upset tonight.”

 _Right_. That’s where this all started.

Her news woke him up, but he’s still fogged with desire for her, as her hands move over him in slow sweeps. He clears his throat, gives a good couple blinks that are meant to clear his brain, and angles his head back to get a better look at her. Just because he can’t stop touching her, he curls his fingers around the shell of her ear. Her head follows the motion like a kitten.

“Did you want a boy?”

She makes a sound in the negative in her throat. “I promise that’s not it.”

“Okay. Yeah. A girl is fantastic news.”

Her tongue tests her lower lip. “I’m glad you think so.”

His gaze settles on her lips. Free of gloss or lipstick, they’re still a dusty pink. “I do.”

She's pink and white like that all over.

“You’ll have to help me think of names.”

He brings their knit hands up to his mouth and kisses the inside of her wrist. She smells like peppermint soap. For a moment, her body inclines into him more solidly like what they want is in perfect concert, and then she’s slipping free of him, wrapping an arm around her middle as she pulls away.

“I told my parents. That's when my day went south.”

Her absence from his arms leaves him without purpose. He feels like a deflated balloon and reaches up to rub the back of his neck to give him something to do with his empty hands.

She points to her living room, where the only source of light emanates from a table lamp with a woven shade that throws narrowly slatted light. “Want to sit with me?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“Do you need water?”

He swallows. He’s got that gummy beer feel in his mouth. More than that, it feels as if the mood has gotten away from him, and he doesn’t know how to redirect it, so he can get back to the certainty he felt in the car. He was filled with confidence that he could tell her or show her what he wants. Either from the sheer stupidity of liquid courage or Robb’s encouragement.

“I’m pretty sobered up, Sans.”

“Well, I really threw them for a loop too, telling them I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, shit. Of course.” It should have been his first thought that she told them she was pregnant. “I didn’t know you were going to tell them.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, but when I heard the results and knew everything was okay, I went over to their house and told them.”

It shouldn’t bother him, but the realization that she told her parents first that she’s having a healthy baby girl is a sharp reminder how things stand between them. It’s their reality because it’s what she wants. It’s what she wanted all along, in spite of one night.

A night and a morning.

Jon already took his shot, and here they are.

“Sit with me?” she asks, holding out her hand to him, as he hesitates in the entryway.

It was her news to share with whoever she wanted, he reminds himself.

He takes her hand, following after her with their arms stretched between them.

Regardless, he’s tethered to her, whether he’s holding her or not, whether his feelings for her are reciprocated. There was no way he was going to hit on those girls tonight.

“Didn’t go well?”

“They were shocked. And I mean, I knew they would be. I’d prepared myself for their reaction and anything they might ask me, you know? All my rational plans for how ready I was to be a mom.”

“Yeah,” he says, as she bends, tossing aside pillows on her couch to make room for two.

There are a lot of pillows. Understandably. Some of his favorites from the craft shows have found a home here. The Hollywood looking pink shell. The white ball no one could ever use as an actual pillow. He likes that one best. Not only because it takes some real skill: he knows it's difficult to get it this perfectly round. But also because it's purely decorative art. All his work serves a practical function; some of hers is just there because it’s beautiful, and he can appreciate that.

“I explained, they congratulated me, but—” She folds her leg under her, sitting sideways and pulling him down beside her. He flops down too hard and she scoots the last couple of inches until her knees are pressed into his thigh. “I can tell Mama is disappointed or doesn’t understand. She’s probably upset I didn’t talk to her before going through with something like IVF. Alone.”

He looks down at their linked hands.

IVF, alone—that isn’t what happened at all even if it was the plan. She says it with such conviction though. Like she’s convinced herself of the truth of it.

He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand. He came here to tell her how he felt, what he wanted. If she wanted the same, there wouldn’t be any need for this self-deception. No need to lie to Robb, who doesn’t buy it. No need to spin out some story with her parents. He could take the burden off of her by telling them what happened and how he’ll take care of her, of the baby. However they take the news, at least it won’t involve lying for the indefinite future about something he doesn’t want to lie about.

“I’m sorry it was a bad night.” His free hand closes on her waist, as he twists, inclining into her, because things feel right when they’re together. It makes sense, touching her, he feels calm and centered, when she’s close. “Sans, wouldn’t it be better—”

“No, Mama would have tried to talk me out of it if I’d ever said what I wanted to do before going through with it. _There’s a guy out there for you. You just have to trust. I didn’t know your dad was the one right away_ ,” she says, talking in an exaggerated impression of her mother while her head bobs from side to side, totally misunderstanding him. “But it doesn’t work out like that for everyone. Not everyone gets that happily ever after. Most people don’t. Not really.”

He taps their hands against his thigh. “Sans—”

“You think they’ll come around? I hate disappointing them.”

He taps their hands again, trying to focus himself. She needs assurances about her family and their love for her. The way she’s looking at him, vulnerable need etched on her face, he wants to drag her into his lap. It’s an ache, his need to physically comfort her.

“Your parents adore you. It’ll be okay. Don't worry about that. What did they uh… what did they think about it being a girl?”

She blinks and gives a shake of her head. “I didn’t tell them. We said we’d keep it between us. For a while.”

His chest expands. “Right.”

She kept that for him. He wants that to be a sign, not just Sansa being kind.

“Sans, I love you.”

She braces his face with her hands. “I love you too.”

It’s a throw away, her response. Not a declaration. It's a simple statement of fact from someone who has always loved you. Just not in the way Jon means.

“You’re my absolute favorite drunk,” she says, eyes crinkling in amusement.

“Sorry. Coming here late—”

“I don’t mind,” she says, angling in closer. “I was awake and I got to tell you our news. And drunk Jon is sweet.”

“Drunk Jon?” he asks, as she ruffles his hair.

“Yeah, I always liked how you were with me when you were drunk.”

“How’s that?”

“Just a little less guarded. You smile more.” She looks down at his hand on her thigh, a hand he didn’t realize he’d settled there. “A little handsy.”

“I didn’t come here to try to fuck you.”

Eyes wide, she exhales hard. “Oh.”

“Fuck. That’s not—”

The truth? He _does_ want to sleep with her. He thinks about it absolutely constantly. But he came here to drunkenly confess his feelings and _then_ maybe sleep with her, which seemed legitimate, as he was typing her address into the Uber app.

She shifts on the couch cushion, knees bumping him. “No, that’s a relief. Probably could have found a not pregnant girl at the bar for that, huh?”

“I don’t want to fuck girls at bars, honey. That’s kind of what I came here to tell you.”

She strokes his temple, disturbing his hair there. “You’re drunk, but that’s sweet too, I guess. Are you going to remember this tomorrow?”

“I didn’t have that much to drink.”

“We’ll see.”

He slides his hand over her thigh, over her petal soft skin, until his fingers curl between her and the couch, fingers half under her shorts.

She looks up, meeting his gaze. “Jon. You didn’t have Robb drop you off here, right?”

“No, I got an Uber.”

He drags her towards him, closer, until she hitches herself into his lap, draping her arms over his neck.

“I don’t want you getting a ride at this hour. You’re staying.”

“I can go,” he says, his assurance in contrast to her position, straddling his legs.

“No, I’m going to get you some water.”

She rocks over him, getting ready to disentangle herself from him, and freezes. Her eyes flick down.

His dick has different ideas about what brought him here.

“Sorry,” he says, gaze fixing on what feels like a neutral place—her middle—not her breasts in her snug fitting tank or her bow shaped mouth.

She catches him looking and follows his stare.

She runs her hand down the front of herself. “Can you see?”

There’s nothing that someone who didn’t know her would think anything of, but there’s a change, a slope to her figure.

“Yeah.”

“It won’t be there in the morning. You'll see.”

He wants to duplicate the motion, follow the curve of her body with his hand. His fingers flex against her ass, fighting the urge. “Why?”

“It’s bloat really, I guess. Or my uterus tilting. Weird stuff.” She gives a shaky laugh. “Sexy, right?”

She has no fucking idea what she does to him or she wouldn’t ask that.

He really wants to ask if he can touch her even if there isn't much to feel.

“When will you be able to feel the baby?”

Her head tips up and she smiles big and bright. “Feel the baby move? A month maybe.”

She moves on his lap, a subtle shift that makes his throat convulse. “Water. I promised you water.”

He grabs her arm, steadying her, as she climbs off of him, holds onto her for as long as his arm will stretch, and then buries his head in his hands.

“Headache? I can get you some Tylenol.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he says, dragging his fingers through his hair.

He slumps on the couch, bringing one foot up after another to untie his sneakers and toss them away. Letting his head fall back against the couch, he slides into the corner, wedging himself in place. He might be too old to sleep on Robb’s couch, but it looks like Sansa’s is where he’ll be spending the night.

So much for shooting his shot.


	10. I Can't Stop Touching You

“It’s too cold. Get inside,” Jon shouts, his door slamming, as he walks towards the bed of his truck.

But Sansa’s not going back inside. She knew Jon was dropping something off. He’d been strangely cryptic about it in his text last night. Whatever he’s dropping off, it’s big, draped in a tarp, and roped in place in the bed of the truck. She wants to see what the hell it could be.

Besides, the unseasonably cold November weather does not bother her: she’s hot constantly. Five months pregnant and she can’t stand to wear a coat.

“It feels good out here.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Pregnant. What have you got there?”

“A surprise,” he says, stating the obvious, as he lowers the tailgate. He looks up at her. His cheeks already turning pink from the cold, making him look younger than he is. “It’s like thirty-two degrees out, Sans.”

“I know,” she says, feet crunching on the frosted strip of grass between the street and sidewalk.

All she bothered slipping on, when he pulled up, were her UGG slippers with the Sherpa lining and hard soles. Can’t go running down the sidewalk in bare feet in weather like this. Someone will think you’ve lost your mind.

“That’s a big surprise,” she says, putting out her hand on the truck to steady herself to peer in. It’s too covered up to tell what he’s got hidden. “Can I help you unload it?”

“No.”

His being protective should put her on the defensive. It would have six months ago. Jon Snow doesn’t fall for girls who need to be protected. But she’s shelved the idea that he might fall for her. For now, maybe.

In the meantime, she craves his concerned attention. Every time he’s vaguely chivalrous or worried, she can’t help but creep closer like a cat following a sunbeam.

“What is it?” she asks, moving down the length of the truck, one hand over the other, as he pulls on the ropes.

“A crib.”

Her head snaps up. “What?”

She raises up on her toes.

“Please don’t slip,” he says, throwing back the tarp’s corner to reveal several maple slats.

“Are you kidding?”

Her chest feels like it’s filling with helium. Like she might float away if he doesn’t grab her string. She steps down off the curb and reaches out for his arm. The quilting on his black coat compresses under her fingers until all she feels is the solid muscle of his arm. She says his name, staring down at the soft rosy colored wood slats, as he tugs more of the tarp off.

“Jon, did you make it? You made a crib?”

He slides his arm around her back, pulls her in tight for a second, noses at her hair, and then pushes her towards the curb with a hand in the small of her back. “Please go inside. You don’t even have a coat on, and I’m afraid you’ll fall in those slippers.”

“Hold on. I want to see the crib.”

He leans forward, throwing back more of the tarp. “Go prop the door and wait inside. You’re in next to nothing.”

That’s not true. Joggers and a white t-shirt that used to fit count as something.

“Arya says _I’m_ bossy.”

“I swear to God,” he says, straightening up to shoulder free of his coat, so she backs up, moving onto the grass.

“I just want to see the crib,” she says, trying to stand back up on her toes, but her balance is thrown off without the truck to hold onto. “You can’t make a crib and then refuse to let me see it.”

He points towards the door. “Get your butt inside.”

He smiles at her pout. It’s a smile warm enough to melt ice, and maybe it’s her baby brain making her crazy, but she feels like he smiles more now. More easily. More for her. The thought sends the helium bubble climbing up her throat, and she turns around to hurry back inside, following his direction.

Pushing the door open wide, she bends down to grab the doorstop, an antique she picked up on one of their stops coming back from a craft show. Her hair falls forward in a curtain she pushes away. She wants it off her neck: it feels hot inside, despite how low she has the heat set. Door propped, she kicks off her slippers. Reveling in the cool feel of the hardwood under her bare feet, she peeks around the doorjamb to watch him lift one panel and then another, stacking them in his arms.

He made a crib. For the baby. She couldn’t possibly love him more than she does right now. Not even when he picked her right off the floor after she told him it was going to be a girl. Her feelings for him are too big. They're dangerous.

She has to do something with herself, so she doesn’t fling herself at him, while he’s carrying panels inside, two at a time into the extra bedroom that’s part sewing room, part nursery. She's over the top sexually frustrated. It’s never been like this in her life, but as soon as her morning sickness improved, it hit her. Unfortunately, she has nowhere to go with this particular pregnancy symptom. That's the general shape of the problem. Her specific problem is Jon: she wants to climb him like a tree.

What she needs is a distraction, so she doesn’t lose her mind over this incredibly thoughtful, generous gesture.

 _A crib_. For their baby to sleep in.

If she wasn't already pregnant, this would be the kind of thing that would make her desperate to have his baby.

Coffee—she can check on the pot of coffee she put on for him. A few weeks ago, she couldn’t have stomached coffee brewing first thing in the morning. Despite still not wanting to drink it, she can stand the smell now. She’s exhausted all the time, but she hasn’t had to take her anti-nausea medicine since she was sixteen weeks.

“I’ve got coffee ready,” she calls out, as the front door closes, the last of the panels hauled in. “Just hold on one sec.”

She can hear him in the entryway, as she pulls a mug from the cupboard. The rustle of his coat, the scuff of his boots on the floor—they’re domestic sounds. Like he’s coming home to her.

The closest he came to saying he wanted her like that was a drunken episode, where he ended up sleeping on the coach. It's an episode she’s no longer naïve enough to take too seriously. But the next morning, sober and looking sweetly rumpled, he made her some decent scrambled eggs and toast. Like the right balance between butter and jam?

It would be easy to get used to his presence.

He stops in the entrance to the kitchen, watching her set the mug on the counter with a clink. She reaches for the carafe. Even with her back half to him, she feels the weight of his stare like something heavy on her skin, making her pulse jump in her throat.

She glances over her shoulder to give him a smile. Unexpectedly, in addition to his toolbox, he's got a brown paper bag in the other hand.

“What have you got there?”

He turns the bag a quarter turn until the logo stamped on the front shows—Vincent Van Doughnut.

“You didn’t” she says, carrying the polka dot mug over to him. “Trade me,” she says, taking the bag from him as she hands over the coffee.

Their fingers brush in the transfer, when he hooks his finger in the handle. His are cold. As hot as she is, cold hands sliding over her body actually sound damn good.

He looks bashful, shifting on his feet with the mug out in front of him. Kind of like how he used to look as a teenager, standing in her mother’s kitchen.

“It’s black,” she says, unrolling the top of the bag.

“Thanks. Perfect for a psychopath.”

“No, thank you. You are officially the best, yet again. And you know, I think that has to be wrong, the whole black coffee business,” she says, reaching up to stroke down his arm. “A bad sampling of the population. You’re too thoughtful to be a psychopath.”

She peers down into the bag. The smell of fried dough and sugar instantly makes her mouth water. Sometimes she walks to the shop and gets one as a treat, but personal delivery is even better.

“These are my absolute favorite.”

“I know.”

She smiles up at him. Of course, he does. Jon's observant. Back in high school, she just thought he was quiet, but that was selling him short.

He lifts his chin at the bag. “There’s a lemon lavender in there for you.”

“Oh my God,” she says, setting it on the counter. “Why are you single?”

“I don’t know,” he says, as she pulls out the square white iced doughnut sprinkled with lavender.

She pinches it between her thumb and forefinger at the corner. It’s terrible manners not to serve him first, but she can’t wait.

Head tipping up as the icing hits her tongue, she mumbles around the bite, “So good.”

His mouth twitches.

“Sorry. I'm starving. All the time.”

“It's okay.”

“I’ll get a plate for you,” she says, chasing icing on her lower lip with a swipe of her tongue.

“You could just put it in my mouth.”

He chomps his teeth, and she grins at him.

“You don’t have to eat like an animal just because I am,” she says, turning towards the cabinets.

“You’re the furthest thing from that.”

“Okay, pregnant and hungry then,” she says, moving the bag aside to make room for a plate.

But before she can reach up to grab one off the top shelf, Jon is behind her.

He sets his mug on the counter and reaches over her shoulder. “I got it.”

Her fingers wrap around the edge of the counter, as his chest brushes her back.

“Grab me one, will you?” he asks, as he picks his coffee back up. He takes a noisy sip. “I can eat while I work assembling this thing for you. It won’t take me too long.”

“Can I watch?” she asks, tilting the bag.

She can tell which of the remaining doughnuts is his. Nothing fancy, plain iced chocolate. It’s so very Jon that he would forgo one of their fancy artisanal choices for this. 

“Might not be super thrilling,” he says, speaking into the mug.

Their square doughnuts are so large that there’s hardly enough room on the salad plate to put her partially eaten one alongside Jon’s untouched chocolate one, so she takes another bite. A sacrifice if there ever was one.

“This isn’t exactly high skill. I gotta screw some panels together.”

“I really wanna watch.”

“All right then, come on,” he says, taking another sip. “I might put you to work.”

“Good,” she says, picking up the plate of their doughnuts.

She follows after him through her living room, her feet silent in comparison to the heavy footfalls of his work boots.

Carrying his heavy professional toolbox, she can see the muscles bunch in his back underneath his waffle knit shirt. She bites her lip. She wouldn’t mind him picking her up again.

The lights aren’t on in the sewing room, where he's propped the crib panels, so Sansa throws the switch, as he sets his toolbox down.

“I’ll have to take the crib off the registry.”

“Did you have your heart set on it?”

“No, this is a million times better.”

Her baby will sleep in a crib Jon made. She feels that helium expand in her chest and she closes her eyes against the floating feeling threatening to carry her off.

“Okay, good. I don’t trust those things. Always being recalled. This is safe,” he says, spinning left and right before gesturing with the mug at her sewing table. “Do I need a coaster?”

“No, it’s fine.”

Sansa places the plate with their doughnuts next to his mug, pushing both back far enough that they're not at risk for taking a spill.

“Along this wall?” he asks, pointing.

“Yeah. Please. I want the large print wallpaper I showed you on this wall.”

Gold peonies bigger than her head on a winter white background. It’s pricey though. She might have to find something more in her budget. Which would be a shame: the maple would look so gorgeous against it.

Jon’s been incredibly sweet about the screenshots she takes of looks she likes for the sewing room turned nursery. Arya doesn’t particularly care about design and her mom, who would normally provide the feedback she’s looking for, has been a little cool about the whole thing until just recently. Jon more than filled the gap, when she wanted to gush about something.

“That’ll look great, Sans. It'll anchor the space.”

She drags her lip through her teeth again, as he crouches down and unlatches his toolbox.

“Now, I want you to know, I did this right. Linseed oil, no glues. It’s really safe. Nothing dangerous for the baby. You don't have to worry about VOCs.”

“I'm sure you did.”

Another thing he’s been great about: researching things about the baby and pregnancy, so she doesn’t feel like she’s in this scary thing alone. Even the medical history he gave her for the binder she’s putting together that is way more detailed than she ever expected. She just has to remember to put it in one of the sleeve protectors, so she doesn't lose track of it. It would be ridiculous to ask him to do it again.

She walks over to the panels and runs her hand over the top one. It’s so smooth it feels soft to the touch. She can’t feel the grain at all.

“This maple. It's absolutely gorgeous.”

“It should work well with your ideas for the room.” Pulling out a screwdriver, he looks up at her. “And listen, do not paint this room. I’ll do it. I’ll use low VOC, but you’ll have to stay somewhere else for a couple days to be safe. My place if you want.”

She was going to ask Robb to help paint or see if Arya would do it for her. But Jon keeps helping in ways she didn’t expect. The idea of sleeping in his bed, however, does more than just make her want to creep closer to bask in his attention.

Her eyes dart to the ass of his jeans.

Her hormones are out of control.

She turns back to the doughnuts to distract herself from the idea of what his sheets would smell like. He smelled so good that morning—like warm guy, like something that should be distilled for a soy candle on Etsy—before they got in the shower together and he hitched her thigh up, hand sliding over her wet skin.

She grabs the plate up and spins on him, holding it out in offering.

He looks up. Brushing his hair away from his brow, he gives her a smile, as she lowers the plate enough for him to grab his doughnut. He takes a monstrous bite. Shouldn't be attractive, but here she is, transfixed by the roll of his throat above the notched collar of his shirt.

“And don’t get that dresser from IKEA either,” he says looking down at the doughnut. He makes a borderline obscene noise in appreciation. “These _are_ better than Dunkin'.”

She laughs. “Yeah. That's the concept. But Jon, you do not have to make a dresser.”

“No, but I will. You can pick out the hardware and I’ll build you something that will grow with her.”

He puts the uneaten half on the plate, and she sets it back on the table for him.

“You obviously looked at the registry.”

“I got the shower invitation the other day.”

Sansa hates the invitations Arya picked out. They feature a joke she thinks is tacky, but she’d never say anything. She's lucky Arya agreed to host.

“Can you come?”

“Yeah. I’ll be there,” he says, bouncing a screw in his palm. “I’ve got to e-mail Arya about it.”

He hefts one of the shorter panels over and aligns it with the longest one.

“Sorry if it’s a little weird. It being at my parents’.”

Turning the screwdriver, he gives her a sidelong look. “That won’t be the weird thing about my being there, Sans.”

“Right.”

Why it's weird is something she tries not to directly address with him. Sometimes it's necessary, pointing out that the baby is his or at least, shares his DNA, such as with the medical history. Otherwise, she tries not to reference it, so he doesn't feel pressured.

Still, she knows she verges on overly sentimental about it, wanting to share things with him alone. The baby's gender, the first time she felt the baby move, picking out a name. She can't stop herself though. It feels too good, when he gives her the reaction she was seeking from him.

“I’ll deal.” He sets the screwdriver aside. “Steady this for me? I’m going to attach the bottom.”

“Sure. Here?” she asks, moving around him over to where the two panels meet.

“Perfect,” he says, reaching for the large solid panel. “Let me get in here right next to you,” he says, scooting along the floor.

She presses closer to the wall, as he balances the piece with one hand and bends close to the short panel.

“I was surprised to be invited. I thought you’d want to do a girls thing,” he says, snatching up the screwdriver again.

“It’s more modern to have it be co-ed,” she says, lying breezily, while staring down at the play of his muscles, as he adjusts the panel and puts the screw in the pre-drilled hole.

Even the way he squints, while he works, is sexy. Something about all that concentration.

She would have preferred the traditional kind of shower, but she wanted Jon to be there more, and a co-ed shower was the only way to make that happen. Arya liked the idea of a coed, less girly shower better anyway, which made it easier to coerce her into hosting. Emily Post wouldn’t approve of her mama hosting and a sister is probably only marginally better, but Sansa knows she'll have to get over that.

“How are your parents? Your mom coming around?”

“I think it was a good call having her go to the anatomy scan.”

“Yeah?”

It was the first appointment where Jon didn’t serve as chauffeur and emotional support system, although he texted her five minutes before her appointment time. She had to angle her phone away, so her mom wouldn’t see, when she replied to him. He wanted to hear how it went as soon as she could. It's probably not what he envisioned, but she wrote him after the scan from a bathroom stall.

“It made her feel more like she’s a part of things.”

“Good. I’m glad she could be there with you.”

“She did not offer to take me to Steak n' Shake after though.”

Jon half suppresses a laugh, and his dark eyes looking up at her from their contorted position makes her smile wide back down at him.

“But, you know, she's doing her best.”

“Okay, I just got to get here behind this,” he says, angling between her and the crib. She stretches her arms out to give him room to work, but her shins still press into his back.

He gets two more screws in, while she alternates trying to stare forward, failing, and stealing a look down at his neck and arms, while he fiddles with the screws, bracing the bottom panel. He's so efficient. So professional. And his hair looks really black against the white of his shirt.

“That’ll hold. Just keep it steady,” he says, as he backs out on his butt and moves around to the far side of the crib.

He works on the back first, his head disappearing behind the solid panel.

“Lack of strawberry shakes aside, maybe she should take me to the rest of them.”

He doesn’t respond. The silence doesn't feel right.

It means he's off the hook if her mom takes over: he should be all over that suggestion.

“There will be a lot of appointments towards the end.”

“One a week,” he supplies, head reappearing, as he twists and grabs the remaining short panel.

“That’d be a lot.” To ask of you, she means.

“I make my own schedule, you know, Sans. I haven’t minded.”

“I know.”

Because he’s great like that. He doesn’t mind helping. He likes to help, he's gentle, he passes every test she could throw at him. But at some point, she has to do this on her own, because someday, Jon will have a life that’s necessarily separate from hers.

 _Unless_.

But she can’t afford to let that fantasy play out in her mind too often. Not if she wants to save herself a lot of heartache.

“I’ll probably want her in the delivery room anyway,” she says, looking down at her fingers curled around the crib. “Can’t have Arya. She’d spend the whole time telling me I was doing it wrong.”

He looks up again, his movements ceasing. Sitting back on his haunches, he watches her, as he rubs his hand over his thighs. The denim rasps under his touch. It's not until he finally looks away that she can breathe again, as he twists to grab the last panel, the front one with all the slats she first spied in the bed of his truck.

“She feels like she’s always being compared to you, Sans, and not to her advantage. It’s rough on her, competing with you.”

“We’re not competing,” she says, as he moves the panel in place.

“Doesn’t feel like that to her.”

Jon always was fond of Arya, despite her being Robb’s younger sister. The relationship Sansa has developed with him is a much newer thing. Still, she can tell he’s not so much siding with Arya, as trying to explain something to her.

She drums her fingers against the wood. “Well, I'm sure that’s very perceptive of you. I still would prefer my mother.”

With every screw he sinks into the front panel, he works his way back closer to her. The crib is stable enough that it doesn’t require her assistance to hold it in place, and she takes a step back, admiring it in the room. Now the room looks like a nursery. It's a sudden, very striking transformation of the space.

“It’d be strange, my showing up at the hospital. Huh? When the baby’s born?”

He doesn’t look up, but his return to the topic of the hospital makes her feel fidgety. It’s the way it has to be, but in her fantasy, things are different.

“A little.”

“I’ll be worried out of my goddamn mind about you.”

The way he says it, it makes her want to get down on the floor with him and climb into his lap.

She breathes in deep, wrapping an arm around herself. “I’ll be okay.”

“When will I be able to see the baby?”

Robb’s friend, showing up to see her baby? Yeah, a little strange. Even though they’ve known each other for forever. But she doesn’t want to wait weeks for Jon to see the baby either. If her mom stays here with her for a little while after the baby is born, she’s not sure how that will all work out.

“As soon as you want,” she promises, because she’ll make it work somehow if he wants to see her.

He puts his screwdriver in his toolbox and pushes back away from the crib.

“There ya go,” he says, climbing to his feet. He rubs the back of his neck, as she slips in close to his side and touches his back.

“It’s beautiful. It’s an heirloom.”

He drapes his arm around her shoulders and rubs his hand along her upper arm.

She wants to say the next baby can use it too, something to hand down like the Christening dress they've all worn, but she bites the words back. That’d be the surest way to freak him out.

“Hopefully the baby likes it too, and sleeps for you,” he says, letting go of her to lean for his doughnut.

“You know,” she says, peering into the empty crib, as he takes one bite and then another, “we can’t just keep calling her the baby. Have you been thinking about names?”

“You really want my input?”

“I told you I did. Or do you not remember?”

He was drunk—drunk and sweet and saying things he wouldn’t say sober.

“I wasn’t that drunk, Sans,” he says, sucking icing off his thumb. “I just thought you were trying to be nice.”

“No, I meant it. Do you have any pretty names in your family?”

“Oh. You want a family name then?”

“I thought it would be nice. I’ve got a list going in the binder.”

She started it before she knew whether it was going to be a boy or girl.

“Of course you do.”

“Sansa is a family name.”

He gives her a sly crooked smile. “Might look funny, though, you naming her Lyanna.”

“Tad suspicious,” she agrees, running her hand along the length of the crib. “What else you got, Snow?”

“Uh… Sara,” he says, picking up his coffee mug. It's cool enough that it probably doesn't taste very good, but he gamely drinks without complaint. “Great-grandma or great-great, I think,” he says, brows knitting. “My mom talks about her sometimes.”

Sara Snow, she thinks to herself before doing the mental correction. “Sara Stark.”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t sound too bad. You’ll pick something good. After doing all the work, you deserve to choose.” He lifts the mug towards the crib. “You sure you like it? I know it’s not exactly like what you had on the registry.”

“It’s better. Obviously. It’s beautiful. Jon, this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

It’s not hyperbole. It’s not just the effort that went into it. It’s the sentiment. It’s the fact it’s for their baby.

She touches the top of her stomach, where it’s starting to feel like it’s pushing her ribs up, and his eyes follow her movement. She has a fleeting desire to ask him if he wants to touch, but she doesn’t trust herself if he starts touching her.

“I make furniture, Sans.”

She shakes her head. “You make beautiful furniture.”

“Well, I wanted to do it. I wanted the baby to have something I made.”

She grabs hold of his arm. She has to. He can’t say things like that to her and not have her need desperately to touch him.

“You need me to leave you to your morning?” he asks, setting his mug back down.

“Do you have to go?” she asks, though she should let him leave. She should get some distance between them, so she doesn’t try to kiss him or start to cry. She is, however, in this one instance, her own worst enemy, because she can't stop herself from saying it: “Because, I’ve got the pictures from the ultrasound. Of the mango.”

He rubs his chin. “The fruit system is becoming increasingly exotic. How big is a mango?”

She gestures with her hands in front of her stomach, estimating. “You want to see? I’ve got them right over here.”

“Yeah, of course.”

They’re in the binder with the birthing plan and the information about promoting healthy sleep and feeding and all the rest, organized in tabs. She has it on the built-in shelves alongside older binders filled with carefully folded sewing patterns she made herself.

“You can really sort of tell something this time,” she says, sliding it from the shelf. She carries it to the sewing table and opens it to the right page, where she has a pocket insert and all the pictures stowed away. “I think she has your nose.”

She’s sure of it. She keeps taking them out, looking from picture to picture, moving down the strip, trying to see something of either one of them in the profile. The one thing she's sure of is the nose.

“Is that bad?” he asks, holding out his hand for the long strip she pulls free.

“No. You have a nice nose. You have a handsome face,” she says, looking up at him and back at the strip. “Do you see it? The resemblance?” She points at the little nose in profile. “There’s a few 3-D ones further down. It’s more obvious there,” she says, as excitement creeps into her voice and her hand closes around his arm again.

“Maybe. Yeah. I still think it would be better for her if she looked like you.”

She gives his arm a squeeze. “You can keep them.”

She gave him some of the first set too, and he told her he has them with the note she wrote, thanking him for agreeing to be the donor. She doesn’t know why he confessed something like that, but she thinks about it a lot. Especially when she’s feeling lonely.

“Thanks, Sans,” he says, closing his left hand around the one she has absentmindedly left on his arm.

“Sorry,” she says, slipping her hand free of him. “I keep touching you. I don’t know how people do this having a baby thing solo without going around pawing at strangers.”

He accordion folds the pictures back up with as much care as she uses handling them and tucks them next to his mug. “Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. Pregnancy is making me clingy.”

“Well, you can paw at me. I don’t mind,” he says, voice softer than usual.

It’s a sexy morning voice. Not a crib assembly voice. It slides over the skin of her lower back.

She turns, steps to the side, so he can pass by her to pack up his stuff.

He doesn’t budge.

“Just what you wanted, right? A pregnant woman all over you.”

His eyes dip down again. “What does that matter?”

At first, she only looked pregnant at night. It was like the great disappearing belly every morning, when she woke up and got dressed for work. But suddenly, a couple weeks ago, she looked pregnant from the moment she got up. And as much as she looked forward to this, she has this strange unsettled feeling about her body, whenever she’s around Jon. Like she wishes just for the moment, she’d look like her normal self. Dark circles under her eyes. A body she’s not accustomed to—even her boobs are too big. It's not how she wants to be for him.

“I’m tired and I definitely look pregnant.”

“I like the way you look,” he says.

She pulls a face, but the way he’s looking at her is so intense that she feels it again, the way she did in the kitchen. His gaze plays along her skin like a physical touch—expectant, restrained, waiting for her to do or say something.

“Another good reason to have a partner,” she says, trying to sound unbothered. “So, they have to say nice things to you about the way you look.”

He snakes out an arm, wraps it around her waist, and tugs her in loose against his hip. “I always like the way you look.” His hand slides along her side, as he looks down at her. “No different than before. Maybe better.”

Raising up on her toes, Sansa closes the distance between them. Turning him to her with a slide of her fingers around his neck, she tows his mouth to hers.

His breath hitches against her lips, and unlike the last time, when he almost killed her with the slow build of soft kiss after soft gentle kiss, this time, his tongue moves against the seam of her mouth without hesitation and she parts her lips.

His tongue brushes hers. He moans, hands flexing against her body. She loves the sound of that deep, vibrating moan. She needs it. She feels powerful with his head bowed over hers and him making that sound because of her. She’s desperate to hear it again, and twists her head to the side, trying to draw it from him again.

His fingers dig into her hip, pulling her against him, as he tilts his head, deepening the kiss.

He tastes like doughnuts and coffee.

She would have kissed him when he most without a doubt would have tasted like beer and cigarettes too. When he swore that he hadn’t come over to fuck her. A vow that was a sharp disappointment, despite her wanting more from him than to be a girl he wants to fuck after he’s had one too many beers.

She’d kiss him with morning breath. After a garlicky meal on the Hill. She’d kiss him when he was sick, knowing it would probably get her sick too. She can’t imagine, as he kisses her, wet and deep, a circumstance where she wouldn’t always want to kiss him. She just wants more of this. Always.

She drags her fingers through his dark glossy hair, fingernails scraping over his scalp. He palms her ass and presses her against his erection. She gasps against his mouth. The feel of him hard against her pelvis sends a shiver of lust down her limbs.

Yes, more of that too, she thinks, scrambling at his neck to pull him down closer.

He felt so good, moving inside her, arms braced on either side of her face, mouth at her neck and ear and whispering things she hadn’t ever imagined Jon saying to her.

Giving in to her wordless struggle for more, he lifts her a little, hand firm against her back, and consumes her in a crushing kiss.

She wants it all.

Even in her changing body, she’s weightless, when she gets her wish and he hefts her the rests of the way up, so she can wrap her legs around him and he can carry her down the hall to her bedroom.

His kisses turn unhurried, as he lays her down on her bed, his body following, crawling over her. It feels like a lifetime ago, he held her in this bed. She’s dreamed about it since, hot and bothered pregnancy dreams that are so realistic she wakes up with wet thighs, but this is real.

The delicious solid weight of him presses her down into the mattress, and she adjusts her legs around him, drawing him in closer.

Supporting himself on his forearms, Jon breaks the kiss. She swallows the desperation that claws at her throat, the sharp fear that he might stop, because he never really wanted this.

Dark eyes hooded with unmistakable desire look down at her. There’s a tenderness in the soft scowl he gives her, head tipping down to look at their body’s sandwiched together. All of it makes her breathe easier, makes her shift her hips to rub against him.

“You okay?”

Now is not the time for overly concerned Jon, despite how much she’s craved his concern for her and the baby of late.

“I won’t break.”

“No,” he pauses, breathing unevenly. Each panted breath is heavy with the same pressing need she feels. She can feel it with each rise and fall of his chest, bearing down on her. “You okay with this? With us?”

She places her hand on his cheek, runs a finger down the length of the nose she sees mirrored in the baby’s picture. “So very okay.”

He sucks in a shuddering breath and then takes her mouth in a tender kiss, rocking against her. His erection moves against the place where everything feels centered. She can’t hold back her groan, as her head arches back.

She maps the muscles in his back, in his arms, hands skating over ridges of muscle and tendon, straining with need and restraint. The feel of him under her fingers, holding back, only tightens the swirl of the want low in her belly.

His phone rings. She jerks. On a loud setting, it rings from somewhere in his jeans. Her heel slips against the sheets.

Even as he kisses her and moves his hips against hers, it rings and rings. She closes her eyes against the sound, trying to forget everything but his hot mouth moving over her and his hand gripping her thigh, but it chimes—a voicemail—and she feels herself losing focus. That tightening thing inside of her getting undefined, diffuse.

And then another chime—a text. Each intrusive sound takes her further from the place she wants to be. Until it chimes yet again, another text, and she huffs out in frustration against his mouth, as her arm flops on the bed.

“Jon.”

His fingers are at her temple, stroking her hair. “Ignore it.”

“I can’t,” she says, reaching behind him to pull his phone from his pocket.

If for some reason it’s one of her siblings, she swears she’ll murder them.

“Then I’ll silence it,” he says, twisting, trying to grab the phone from her, but she’s already looking at the locked screen with its missed call and text message notifications.

She groans. “It’s your mom.”

“Fuck,” he says, finally managing to get the phone from her.

He rolls off of her onto his back, raising the phone over his face.

She squeezes her eyes shut. “What does she need?”

“Nothing, it’s okay.”

She curls onto her side towards him, rests her hand on his chest, which is still heaving. “She called and texted like four times.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says, tossing the phone to the side on the bed. “I turned it off.”

“Your mom is not usually that persistent.”

He exhales. “Driving over here, she called me. She needs some help with something today. That’s it. Not a big deal.”

“ _Jon_. You’re late to your mom’s?” she asks, fingering the neck of his shirt.

His throat rolls. “A little.”

She gives his chest a push that doesn't so much as rock him. “You have to go then.”

“I’ll text her. Say I’ll be late,” he says, pushing up on his forearm to retrieve the phone he just threw away.

“It’s like a forty-minute drive. You have to go.”

She hates herself for saying it, for telling him to leave, when she wants him inside of her, but what would Ms. Snow think of her if she knew she kept Jon here, when he was supposed to be headed to help her?

He closes his hand on her hip, where her already too small t-shirt has ridden up, lowering his face to hers. “You’re really kicking me out?”

“She’s your _mom_.”

He scrunches his face up and lets his head fall forward into the crook of her neck. “Sans, you’re killing me.”

“They taught us in health that’s a lie that boys tell you.”

He laughs, throaty and low, as she trails a hand over his back. He presses a kiss to her forehead. His lips linger long enough that she almost hauls him back on top of her to feel the weight of him again and forget his being a dutiful son.

Then he’s sliding off of her, and she closes her eyes, so she doesn’t have to watch him leave.

“Don’t forget there’s an extra doughnut in that bag for you, honey.”


	11. You Can't Tell Her

If Jon’s doorbell rang, he missed it. He’s in his wood shop, where it’s almost impossible to hear the thing anyway, but he does finally see his phone light up with a text notification. He assumes it’ll be Sansa.

It’s not.

_Truck’s in your driveway. I know you’re home. Answer your door._

_Hold on. I’m in my shop._

_Come let me in._

Jon brushes the sawdust from his forearms, pulls off his goggles, and stands up from his stool, ruffling his hair to shake any dust free.

He converted the big sunroom into a wood shop as soon as he could afford to make the necessary alterations to the space. It’s got high ceilings, which is perfect for storing long boards, the dust collector is outside, which keeps noise down to a minimum, there’s plenty of natural light, and he was able to install an air cleaner in the western exposure window. But he wasn’t raised in a barn: he takes extra precautions to keep fine dust particles from getting in the house. Like taking his work boots off, so as to not track anything in, and keeping a snake at the base of the door to seal off the inside from anything that would otherwise make it underneath. Which is why it takes him a minute to actually get to the front door.

By the time he’s walking through the living room, Robb is ringing the doorbell he probably missed earlier. Sort of an asshole move to be ringing it like that—pressing it multiple times, rapid-fire style—when Jon asked him to hold on.

Jon looks through the sidelight, as he unlatches the door. Robb’s got his arms crossed over his chest, as if waiting five minutes has been a real inconvenience. Whatever mood he’s in, it explains the doorbell ringing. It’s not like his friend to be moody and difficult—that’s more his and Arya’s specialty than Robb’s. Robb typically is the most popular person in the room, the kind of person people enjoy being around—but something has him in a mood, as Jon pulls the door open.

“What’s up, man?”

No hello, just an terse—“Gonna let me in?”—from his friend, and then he’s pushing on the door with a stiff arm. The door Jon’s already trying to swing wide enough to do just that—let him in.

Jon frowns. “Yeah. Come on in, man. I was in my shop.”

Robb’s eyes scan him from head to toe, deliberately. He bumps Jon's shoulder brushing past, his coat making that loud crinkling sound as he bangs into him.

Jon looks down at his shoulder, where Robb jarred him. “Were you over at your parents’?”

Sansa didn't mention a family thing, but maybe after yesterday, she didn't want to volunteer that she'd be in the neighborhood.

“No.”

Doesn’t make much sense for Robb to be in the neighborhood for an unannounced drop-by. It’s never happened before. Not even on a Sunday afternoon. Defiance is the kind of town bikers and wine enthusiasts visit on a Sunday, but the Starks are locals and they all flew the nest. It’s usually their parents that draw them back home. Mrs. Stark is big on family dinners.

“All right,” Jon says, jerking his thumb towards the kitchen. “You want a beer?”

Jon could use a break, and maybe a cold Budweiser will improve Robb's mood.

He pats the door three times, waiting for Robb's response. Robb doesn’t move past the entryway. He simply stands there, giving Jon the aggressive once over he gave him in the doorway. He gives up on waiting and gives the door a shove. He'll just get himself a beer.

“I saw something at Sansa’s we gotta talk about. Right now,” Robb says with a bob of his head.

Alarm bells sound in his head, and he mimics Robb’s closed off pose, crossing his arms over his chest. Maybe he was too quick closing the door. Ushering Robb back out on the pretense of being in the middle of a project would have been wiser.

It was dumb back in September, running his mouth with Robb in his drunken melancholy at Rosie's. He should have redirected the conversation as soon as it turned to girls, much less Sansa. If Robb saw the crib he dropped off yesterday, he’ll know Jon made it.

Maybe his oldest friend isn't as cool with Jon being interested in his sister as he was a couple of months ago. Or maybe he’s less okay with it, when he doesn’t have a couple of beers in him. He certainly doesn’t seem okay with whatever it is he discovered.

It has to be the crib. It's the only evidence there of his too big feelings for her.

The crib is a lavish gesture. While making furniture is what he does for a living and that's officially his defense, it’s not the same thing as working at Target and using the employee discount to grab something for a friend’s baby shower. There’s time and thought and a lot of himself that goes into making a piece of furniture. People who don’t craft things don’t exactly understand that, but Robb knows enough about his process to get that it’s a big deal.

Unfortunately, Jon didn’t consider what Robb or Arya or Mr. and Mrs. Stark would think about a Jon Snow crib plopped down in the middle of Sansa’s place. Maybe he should have.

Would Sansa want him to pretend she commissioned it? Or just act chill about it? He’d always wanted to make a crib and this was his chance? Good practice.

He doesn’t have his phone on him: left it in the work shop.

Not like he could hold up a finger and make Robb wait, staring daggers at him, while he cleared with Sansa a position to take on this crib issue. He really hopes she didn’t already say something to her brother about it, so at least whatever he says doesn’t blatantly contradict her.

“Why does my sister have your medical history?”

 _Shit_.

The crib would have been a slam dunk to explain compared to a multi-page medical history.

 _Fuck_.

Jon smirks. “You usually go digging through Sansa’s papers, weirdo?”

“I was there to fix her faucet, and it was on her counter in a goddamn open binder, smart ass. So, what the hell is that about?”

Jon widens his stance. “She has a shitty landlord and the place was shoddily rehabbed.”

Robb steps into him. “I swear to God, man. The medical history. Yours. Your mother’s. Your grandparents?”

He used a form he found online, the most thorough one Google produced, and populated it with all his information, everything he knew about his mom, and then pretended like he was switching doctors and called her for the rest of it. He printed it out and gave it to Sansa a couple of weeks ago. A digital copy would have been more discrete. Jon’s still very much a hard copy kind of guy though. He hates staring at screens. Which turns out in this case to be a liability, because unless Robb would take it into his head to hack Sansa’s e-mails, a digital copy wouldn’t have ended up in his hands.

“Start talking.”

Robb points his finger at him, and Jon knocks it away. “Get that out of my face.”

“Looks really strange her having that shit.”

Jon shrugs.

“That’s it? Nothing to explain how goddamn suspicious that looks with my sister being pregnant?”

Jon looks down at the slate floor and back up, his jaw working. He has no clue how to explain away the medical history, and Robb being in his face and pointing fingers isn’t helping his thought process.

“You should ask her.”

“Something tells me this isn’t her favorite topic, so you’re going to tell me.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Really?” Robb nods slowly like he's absorbing Jon's claim. “She’s my sister and that baby is my niece. You’re supposed to be my friend,” he says, voicing rising. “I think that makes it enough of my business.”

“Not when she wouldn’t want us talking about it.”

“Oh,” Robb says in an exaggerated fashion, pulling a face, “you’re so concerned with what she wants, huh?”

“Yeah, I am,” Jon says, snapping.

“Doesn’t fucking look like it.”

He unfolds his arms wide. “I’m always putting that shit first.”

Robb tries to walk around Jon, but Jon sidesteps, blocking him. He's not coming one step farther inside.

“Just tell me one thing: how did you convince my sister to keep quiet about this?”

“I didn’t.”

He doesn’t believe him. He can see it in his face. His friend thinks he’s a liar. And he’s right: he's a big fucking liar, lying by omission for months. Robb’s just wrong about which of them decided it was a good idea to handle things this way.

“You’re going to do the right thing by both of them if I have to frog-march you over to her place,” Robb says, pointing out towards the street, where his car is waiting to haul Jon's ass to Clayton.

Wouldn’t Sansa just love that? Feeling backed into a corner?

Whatever progress he and Sansa have managed to make, a big scene with Robb is liable to put the kibosh on it, rather than speed things along to a happy conclusion.

His whole body is tensed for a fight he doesn't want to have. Though he already dusted himself off in the shop, he repeats the action, brushing brusquely over his forearms. “You’d be wasting your time.”

Robb shakes his head, eyes narrowing. “I can’t believe you. I thought you were pining after her, I was sort of rooting for you, you know? Thought we could be actual brothers, and then this is how you treat her? If that happened with Jeyne, I’d marry her—”

“That’s not what she fucking wants.”

Either the assertion or the forcefulness with which he delivers it in freezes Robb on the spot.

Jon is pissed. He’s angry to be in this position, looking like a jerk. He’s angry his friend believes him capable of treating Sansa like that. Let alone a child.

But of course, Robb thinks that. It’s exactly what it looks like on the surface of things. Can’t really blame him for coming here, ready to bully Jon into being a decent person.

As justified as Robb’s reaction is, Jon wants to defend himself. His pulse is pounding in his head and his face is hot. In his current state, he risks saying the wrong thing and blowing things up even worse. He’s probably already said too much.

He shifts on his feet, trying to reach for the safest noncommittal qualification of his previous statement.

“We’re doing things the way she wants.”

Whatever that is for now. He's cautiously optimistic about it. He dropped the crib off yesterday morning and ended up in her bedroom before she insisted that he leave for his mom’s. A mixed bag.

“My sister wanted you to walk out on your responsibility? So, you just helpfully gave her a medical history and washed your hands of her?”

“No.” There’s no way he’s getting out of this with their deception intact. It’s too late for that. The best he can do is mitigate the damage. If he’s lucky, he can convince Robb to keep his mouth shut, so it doesn’t go any further than this. “I’m the donor.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m the donor, and we didn’t say anything, because Sansa wants to keep it private.”

“What in God’s name?” Robb points again, but less threateningly this time. “She asked you to be the father?”

His incredulity doesn’t sit well with Jon in his current level of agitation. It’s fair, but Jon still hates it.

“Donor,” Jon clarifies with a raise of his brows.

“My sister asked _you_ to be a sperm donor?”

It is the truth. Just not the how the situation resolved itself. So, yes. He even has a note card with her thanks to prove it. Right alongside the ultrasound pictures of the baby.

“Try not to act so shocked,” Jon says, as he turns his back on his friend.

Even if Robb doesn’t want a beer, Jon needs one. Immediately.

“She asked you to father a child,” Robb calls after him “and you weren’t taken aback at all? I mean, give me a minute to process.”

“You have no idea,” Jon says, toeing open his kitchen door.

It swings wide and he catches it before it smacks the far wall.

“Can I actually come in?” Robb asks, peering around the doorway.

“Yeah, you can come in, asshole. Try not to point a finger in my face again,” he says, letting the door fall.

Robb catches it, palm outstretched. “You can see how this looked. Right, man?” he asks, and then adds with no small amount of nerve, “Can I get that beer?”

Jon throws him a look before he wrenches open the fridge.

Robb raises his hands as if in surrender. “Look, I’m sorry. I couldn’t just let it go. You’d have been game for joining me if it’d been… I don’t know, Harry’s medical history on her counter.”

Facing into the fridge, Jon bends down and shuts his eyes. He takes a deep breath to calm his jumping nerves. It doesn’t do much.

Grabbing two beers from the bottom shelf, he turns back to Robb. “I get it.” He angles his head towards the counter height bar. “Under the circumstances, I’d beat the crap out of me too.”

Robb takes Jon’s wordless invitation and walks around to the opposite of the counter. “I’m kind of relieved I don’t have to.”

Robb might not want to hit him anymore, but Jon still feels more secure having something between them. It gives him the mental fortitude to do what he still has to do here, which is lie through his teeth for the duration of this little visit. Not the easiest chore: he’s not really in the habit of lying to his best friend.

“I don’t know whether I like my chances that much anymore. I would have taken you back in the day, but I have a day job now. Meanwhile, you’re acting like Paul Bunyan.”

Jon cocks his head. “I don’t know whether you would have had me in the day. Debatable.”

Robb reaches for one of the beers, as he drags one of the three stools back. The legs stutter over the natural imperfections in the slate tile. Jon’s kitchen stools are a hell of a lot more comfortable than the ones at Rosie’s with a nice low back to give support. Much better visual design too. They have good lines. Sexy lines. The wood grain flows with the cut of the back, the seat cushion is in a durable fabric stiff enough to give form to the otherwise swooping design. It works. It was one of the first things he designed for the house. He brought a lot of his furniture with him, when he moved in, but he'd never had a bar to design stools for himself.

Robb shoulders out of his black coat, letting it fall over the back of the stool, the one Jon was so proud to place here in the kitchen of his first house.

Sometimes Jon looks around the place and wonders whether Sansa would be happy here. If the things he’s made would meet with her approval. Can't find much fault with the yard. She doesn't have one in Clayton. This one is big, partially shaded, plenty of room for a playhouse. He could build something really outrageous.

“There’s no way I’d want to agree to something like that,” Robb says, pushing up on the counter with the heels of his hands, as he throws his leg over the seat, “being a sperm donor. For anyone, I don’t think. It’s too much. I mean, I guess I give you credit for agreeing to it.”

Jon cracks his beer open. “She’ll be a great mom.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Robb opens his too, shaking his head. “I mean on your end that’s a big deal. That’s a lot to agree to.”

Jon drinks. It’s icy cold. He doesn’t taste it, you never really do if the Bud is cold enough. Just swallows one mouthful after another. If he just keeps swallowing beer, tipping it back farther, he won’t have to contradict Robb’s perfectly reasonable assessment.

It was a big deal to agree to be a donor, no matter how little Sansa claimed to want from him in the bargain.

He didn’t agree to being a donor just because Sansa will be a great mom and he wanted to help a friend out. He hated the thought of disappointing her. He couldn’t believe she wanted it to be him. And ultimately, he hated the idea of her doing it with someone else.

“Does she know you’re in love with her?”

He chokes. Once, twice, each cough getting progressively worse, until he sets his can down to beat his chest. Robb's staring at him like he's nuts, when he leans down into the counter, gripping its edge.

“You all right there?”

Clearing his throat, he straightens up and pushes the can along the counter with the back of his fingers, safely away from himself.

“Yeah. We’re friends,” he finally manages to get out, face screwed up and eyes watering.

When he texted her that he was done at his mom’s, he didn’t get a response for over an hour. She’d taken a nap. Or so she says. Being pregnant, she does nap a lot. But he didn’t have the nerve to offer to come back after the lapse in time. It seemed too forward. What was he supposed to say?

_Wanna pick up where we left off?_

“You’re just never going to tell her then? That’s your plan?”

He clears his throat again. It burns.

“It’d be pretty complicated, considering.”

He did tell her. Once. On Robb's advisement. He’s tried showing her a hundred different ways too.

“I guess so. Damn,” Robb says, rubbing his thumb and index fingers along the line of his brow. “Sorry, man.”

“No, it’s cool.” Jon exhales to try to slow his racing heart, so maybe he sounds less like he's totally miserable, while claiming to be fine with the way things stand. If his eyes would stop watering, at least he wouldn’t look like he’s crying for fuck’s sake. “The baby is what’s important.”

“Well, I guess in the scheme of things, this makes more sense,” Robb says, lifting his beer up.

He tips it back, while Jon wonders how he's managed to convince his friend that any of this is sensible.

He makes that parched sound. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around you running out on a kid like that. You know, with your dad and all.”

“Sansa knows I’m here for her and the baby for whatever she wants.”

“What’s that gonna be like? A kid? Your kid?”

It’s going to be Mrs. Stark in the delivery room. Of course, it is, and yet, he hadn’t really thought that far, when Sansa sprung it on him yesterday. He'd just been cruising on being the one she leaned on, being her support at appointments and in texts and phone calls. The truth made him tense up all over. He hadn’t thought about how he might not even get to visit her in the hospital or see the baby for days. She’d let him come, of course, but given the fact that no one is supposed to know he’s the father, it pretty much rules it out. He’s just the kid from down the lane. Not real family.

How many days until he’s allowed to hold her—the mango? She’ll probably be a watermelon by then, and someone else will get the honor of holding her first.

Of course, he goddamn knew it, but somehow, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since she verbalized it.

“It’s Sansa’s baby. Just half my DNA.”

“Well,” Robb says, shifting on the stool, “let’s be real here. You’re not moving to Chicago or something, you’re going to see this kid. With some regularity.”

“Yeah.”

“So, it might occur to you on occasion, hey, that’s my kid,” Robb says, tilting his can.

“Obviously. She asked me to be a godparent.” He grabs his beer. His throat is still burning, but holding it gives his hands something to do. “I want to be involved. I uh, I made the baby a crib. That’s what I thought you saw and wanted to talk about.”

Robb chuckles. He looks down at his can with his tongue sticking in the side of his cheek.

“What?” Jon asks, gesturing with the can. “Spit it out.”

“You handcrafted a crib for the baby to sleep in? The baby you also had a hand in making? Shit, man.”

“Yeah?”

“You knew she’d love that.”

Jon lifts one shoulder. “I hoped she would.”

But he also wanted the baby to have something of his. Something important.

“You hoped? There’s a one hundred percent chance she’s at home weeping over that crib right now.”

She sent him screenshots of some muslin sheets for the mattress, she thought would look good in it, so he knows she's excited about it, but weeping?

“You’re making it sound like an emotional manipulation on my part. I make furniture.”

Jon forces himself to take a test sip of his beer. He doesn’t die and commits to a bigger one. There's only about a third of the can left after his earlier dedication to draining it.

“Well, if I know one thing about my sister, it’s that she’s a romantic.”

The can dings, when he sets it on the counter, ringing from being almost empty. “She’s a lot more practical than you think.”

The whole planning to have a baby on her own proves his point. She knows what she wants, she plans, she goes after it, emotions mostly aside.

Sansa gave up on Hollywood romanticism. She was that girl once, but not any longer.

“Maybe,” Robb says, gesturing around his can, “but she might also really go for the whole you’re having my baby, here is the crib I made, I’m confessing my love thing. I’m pretty sure Jeyne would agree. Fuck complicated if you love her.”

Jon has a stab of panic in his already tight chest.

“Hey, you can’t tell Jeyne.”

Robb head snaps up. The look he gives Jon makes him nervous.

“No, no, no, I’m serious, man.”

“You want me to lie to my girlfriend?”

“No, I want you to lie to everyone.”

Robb rolls his eyes. “That should be easy.”

“It's not, but you can’t let on that you know who the father is. Not even with Sansa.”

“That’s ridiculous. It would be kind of a relief, right? That she doesn’t have to keep up the charade with me?”

“No, she wouldn’t be thrilled you found out.”

It would make her anxious, and she's got enough to be nervous about at the moment.

“I’m not my mom for God’s sake. I'm not gonna freak out that you're the dad.”

No, but Robb already has shared opinions about whether this was a wise choice for Jon to make. He was shocked Sansa picked him. Questioning her choice is the kind of thing she didn’t want. He’ll probably have hundreds of other ideas about the baby and what their situation should look like—Sansa and the baby, Sansa and the baby and Jon. Maybe not straight up judgments, but definitely opinions.

The Starks aren’t shy about their opinions or their idea of what is right and what is wrong.

“No, but telling one of you is the same as telling all of you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Then prove me wrong and keep your mouth shut. She didn’t want drama around her choice.”

“Can I ask you something?” Robb asks, propping his elbows on the counter and steepling his hands before his mouth. “When the baby comes out with a head full of dark hair and grey eyes? What are you geniuses gonna say?”

Maybe not dark hair and dark eyes, but Sansa thinks she has his nose. He's tried to see it, but he’s not sure a pretty little girl deserves to be saddled with his nose.

It probably won’t be the case. Other than Arya, all the Stark kids look like their mother. She’s more likely to look like Sansa. Something about that Tully DNA.

Besides, no one is going to think to look for a resemblance between him and the baby.

“So, what if she does? I told you to your face I was the donor and you didn’t want to believe it, right?”

“You’re just never going to tell anyone?”

“And neither are you. That’s the way Sansa wants it.”

Robb runs his finger around the rim of the can. “Not even the kid? Just gonna slide her a medical history,” he says, miming the action across the counter, “and call it a day?”

Sansa says some kids have no interest in their biological origins; others really want to know.

Jon wanted to know why he didn’t have a dad. He didn’t want to meet him though, once he knew the truth.

It would be awesome if they didn't have to worry about it. If Sansa feels the same way as he does and they can parent her together, it wouldn't be an issue. But if things don't end up working out between him and Sansa, in the romantic sense, and the mango wants to know where she came from, they’ll tell her. He just doesn’t want her to ever think he didn’t want her. Or didn’t care about her mom, the way his father didn’t really care about his mom.

The truth is so far from that.

“Robb. It’s not any of your business.”

“Fine, I think you’re both crazy and I hate to see you being dumb, but I won’t say shit to anyone.”


	12. You Told Him

When the older Starks were in college and Jon was the only one left in town, Blackout Wednesday, an unofficial holiday, featuring reunions and overindulgence, was something he looked forward to. He expects they did too. Though, not all of the Starks were reliably present: those Wednesday nights before Thanksgiving back in the day didn’t always involve Sansa. Some years she was off with high school girlfriends, sometimes a boyfriend. And that was okay, despite the fact that Jon was fond of her. It wasn't the end of the world or something.

Funny how things change.

He doesn't go a day without talking to her now, which makes a reunion tonight unnecessary. Especially a group one, where he has to be on guard.

With the Starks living back in the area, they all could easily skip Blackout Wednesday. They see each other regularly, and he and Robb are at an age or approaching it, where the appeal of drinking to the point of getting really drunk is on the sharp decline.

But not all of their childhood friends do the semi-monthly group dinner: there is Theon.

Theon did not move back home after college, and he’s down from Chicago for Thanksgiving with his sister, since they have a weird thing with their dad. It's Theon who apparently still thinks the unofficial holiday one worth celebrating. His group text suggested Fox & Hounds for Drinksgiving, and considering what he's been through, they all probably felt like they couldn't say no even if they wanted to.

It’s not a bad place; Jon likes it. Its wood fire smell, cozy low beamed ceiling, paneled walls, mounted trophies, antiques, and oil equestrian paintings appeal to a certain English countryside aesthetic he appreciates. One that proliferates less so than the German biergarten vibe one usually finds in the area. The crowd it attracts is a little pretentious, however. Which is why Jon dressed for the occasion, the way he thought Sansa might appreciate.

Not to the degree Theon did, however. Theon’s always been particular about his appearance. He was the guy in high school with hair gel and a comb in his gym locker. His styling efforts have gotten more extreme with age, maybe trying to make up for the fact that he's going prematurely grey. That or low self-esteem. It's hard to tell with Theon. Sansa says he's overcompensating.

There's a certain kind of over-compensation that just seems too damn painful. Like the fact that it looks like his chest is waxed from what's peeking out of his partially unbuttoned shirt. He’s also not wearing socks with his fancy shoes, which has to chafe.

Then there is whatever he’s doing with Sansa. Looking her up and down. Wearing that huge smile, with his hands solidly placed on her shoulders. Leaning in too close. Theon whispers something in her ear, something Jon can’t hear in the hum of the tavern. She laughs. All white teeth and bright red lips.

The laugh bothers him most of all. Theon is charming. Always has been. Charming but cocky.

To be fair, he’s a little less cocky since the scandal. He was disbarred, and because of who his father is, even though it happened in Chicago, it ended up in the local news too. Theon hasn’t been himself since.

“ _You’re_ not going to get blackout drunk, are you, sweetheart?” Theon teases.

She smiles, playing along, despite her being the least likely of all of them ever to take the holiday’s pejorative name as a challenge. “No. Not this time.”

Theon definitely shouldn't have done what he did. But it's hard not to feel sorry for him. Scandal, a forced career change, his girlfriend broke up with him—it’s a lot. And his shitty father rivals Jon's own. It's not an excuse, but Theon was desperate to make something of himself. Try making a father proud, who is incapable of anything but being disappointed. See where that gets you in life.

“I promise we'll have enough fun tonight that you won’t regret being dragged out with a bunch of drunks,” Theon says, hands sliding off her shoulders. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

Theon doesn’t have his old confidence, but Jon knows for a fact that Sansa prefers this new Theon, the less cocky version. She’s fond of him in the unshakeable way one can only be fond of someone who has known you your whole life. There's a foundation that's different. Jon doesn’t have a leg up on Theon there. It's a draw if it's a competition.

As uncomfortable as sitting by while Theon makes it his business to entertain Sansa could prove to be. It can’t be as bad as when Theon asks, “Can I?” and she nods yes, because he places his hands over the green clingy knit of her dress. Right over the round part of her belly. Just like that, Theon is touching her and the baby the way Jon has never dared. The way he wanted to, but couldn't bring himself to ask.

The tavern disappears. It’s just Sansa and Theon. His hands on her. Sansa looking down at his spread hands. Theon's saying words that escape Jon, because the whole room has gone silent save for the roaring in his ears.

He blinks but it doesn't clear away the image, even as Theon straightens back up and Arya leans in to shove Theon's shoulder. It's fixed on the inside of his lids.

They’re all laughing at something—except for Jon—but with Theon’s hands to himself, where they belong, Jon’s able to breathe again. He sucks in a breath.

“Aren’t you perfect?” Theon says, pulling her in for a sideways hug.

Sansa is perfect, and Jon wishes he’d said it to her tonight instead of Theon. She looks so pretty in the emerald green dress. Her color is good, not sickly pale, and her blue eyes stand out. Pretty and healthy. Glowing—that's what they say about pregnant women, and he can see why now.

“You’re tiny,” Jeyne says.

“I’m only six months,” Sansa says, glancing down at herself. “Check back in after a couple months.”

“Well, this one right here,” Theon says, nodding at her, “will be the best Stark yet.”

“Thank you,” Sansa says, patting his arm. “That’s sweet.”

“You’re about to be upstaged,” he tells her with a wink.

“I fully expect it,” she says, turning to look for somewhere to put her purse down.

Jon should have taken it from her, so she didn’t have to stand there holding it. At least it’s a small bag, nothing heavy. Still, he’s usually right there, ready to assist.

Talk about not being himself: he’s all off. Aware tonight that he was walking into a situation where Robb knows one version of the truth, everyone else is operating under a total lie, and Sansa doesn't realize Robb believes something different has Jon feeling like it’d be better if he wasn’t here to screw things up. Or at the very least, he should keep his mouth shut, since he is here. Avoid inviting commentary from Robb. Don’t overdo it with Sansa. Don’t overact to Theon's overt friendliness, even though his blood is pumping.

Theon really was just touching Sansa. The baby. Hands splayed out. Like it was nothing. Probably barely gave it a second thought before asking to do it. Just asked and touched her. Before Jon ever has had the privilege. Jon's night it ruined before it ever began.

Jon can feel Robb’s eyes on him. He manages to pull his gaze away from Sansa, sees Robb’s arched brows, and realizes he’s squeezing his jaw with a spread hand.

That’s why his fucking jaw was aching. _Fuck_.

He shoves his hand in the pocket of his pants to jingle his house keys.

“You too, Stark,” Theon says, reaching across to grab Robb’s hand. “Your time to shine is past. Babies get all the glory.”

“I never had any,” Arya says, prompting a hair ruffle from Theon as if she’s ten.

“Same, sweetheart, same.”

Theon throws an arm around Arya’s shoulders. “Both you ladies sit with me,” he says, angling his head towards the leather sofa behind them. “No one in Chicago is this pretty—”

“Will the sofa be comfortable?” Jon interrupts, the volume of his voice all wrong. “Sans?”

Eyes wide, she looks at him for what feels like the first time tonight. When the girls came in, he said hello. But he was careful not to greet Sansa more warmly than her sister, since he really can't afford to betray anything anymore. He was borderline cold and now in your face loud about the seating arrangements and her comfort.

“Would a chair be better than the sofa?” he asks, aware that Theon's looking at him like maybe he shouldn't have been invited.

Theon always was much more solicitous of Robb’s sister than Jon was. Purely out of self-interest. Probably thought if he bided his time, she would fall into his lap. Where they live, the Starks are the kind of people it helps to be connected to. They're well-connected, wealthy. That made dating a girl like Sansa not just a lucky break because she was the prettiest girl in the school. There are perks to being their friends. Jon wouldn't have learned to ride a horse if it wasn't for being Robb's best friend.

“No, the sofa’s fine,” she says, holding his gaze for a moment before setting her purse down on the small circular side table beside the sofa.

Of course, Jon’s been hoping that if he was patient and waited long enough, she’d discover she wanted more from him than a baby. His interest is not exactly selfless.

He watches Theon wrap an arm around her, when she settles in beside him on the Chesterfield style sofa.

Waiting might have been the wrong move.

Jon might need to excuse himself. Either that or do something dumb.

A hand pounds his back, startling him.

“You good?” Robb asks with a lift of his brows that is very much a silent reminder that he can’t kill Theon.

“Yeah. Yep. Great.”

Robb nods. He doesn’t believe him.

Well, he’s not great. He's fucking terrible and pretty sure he's the author of his own misery.

“You going over to your mom’s tomorrow, man?”

His mom is not much of a cook. Something as substantial as Thanksgiving is not her thing.

“We’re going out.”

He was always a little envious of the big holiday things the Starks did. Extended family. Extra tables. Every inch of their house decorated. All the things he didn't have with just him and his mom.

Their little girl will be running around at those events. In some cute outfit Sansa picked out. Sitting in people's laps, the newest member of the family and much adored.

While he and his mom eat out somewhere. Odd man out.

With Arya already folding a leg underneath herself on the couch on Theon’s other side and Jeyne patting the red gingham wingback chair next to hers in invitation for Robb, there's only the leather strap chair closest to Sansa. That or the other wingback closest to the fire, far enough away from the group that they’d have trouble talking to him.

He goes with the one by Sansa, its leather straps creaking as he lowers into it and hunches forward onto his elbows. It’s either a good spot, because it will give Sansa an excuse to pay him some attention without drawing comment or he’ll have a front row seat to Theon flirting with Sansa all evening.

It’s a front row seat.

One he definitely wouldn’t pay for the pleasure of. Not even in the remote past, when he only sometimes thought about how attractive Robb’s sister was. Or how sweet. Or how it would sometimes occur to him that she’d also appreciate something he admired as really beautiful, something no one else would give a second thought to.

But now, he’s in so deep and no one knows the whole of it. Not even Sansa, the one person who he really needs to know. Know and maybe reciprocate.

Instead, he has to sit here, bouncing his foot on his knee, while Theon keeps touching her and drinking a yard of ale like an asshole. Theon's nice enough and complimentary enough that it seems as if he’s doing his best to keep his promise to prevent her from regretting her decision to come out. She keeps her face turned into him, a smile playing on her face and his jokes earning easy laughs from her even without the benefit of alcohol.

Jon plays with his phone. He watches the dance of the fire. He shouts across the space to Robb and Jeyne. He looks vacantly at the bartender, pouring whiskey from Ireland, Scotland, and the U.S. to a group of guys, who are acting like connoisseurs. He does everything he can to keep from staring at the pair of them, pressed thigh to thigh on the couch. Cozily talking to no one but each other.

He gets up. Orders himself a drink. Sits back down, balancing the glass on the arm of the chair, but forgetting to actually take a sip.

Then Arya scoots forward on the sofa, stretches an arm across Theon, and taps Jon on the knee. “You’ll never guess who I ran into. Ygritte,” she supplies without pause, sparing him a guessing game.

It takes him a second to process that. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

He hasn’t bumped into Ygritte in years. Not since she moved. He thinks about her from time to time, because she was his first girlfriend, but he hasn't heard from her in ages.

“Here in town?”

“No, at home. I guess she’s around for Thanksgiving, visiting family. I went for a hike at Matson Hill. Bumped into her on the trail.”

“That’s crazy. She uh, has a cousin, I think, still living in New Melle. Did you guys talk?”

“Yeah, for a little bit. It was cold as balls though.”

“Why would you talk to Ygritte?” Robb says, sticking his nose in it.

Jon frowns at him. It’s a shitty thing to ask. It’s not like they should all be icing his old girlfriend out for God’s sake.

“Am I not allowed to talk to her?” Arya demands.

“Who’s Ygritte?” Jeyne asks, looking between the siblings like she’s watching a ping pong match.

It can be like that with the Starks.

“Jon’s ex,” Arya and Robb both answer, talking over each other.

“Why wouldn’t I talk to Ygritte?” Arya repeats with a frown as deep as Jon’s.

“You were like five, when Jon was with her. What do you care?”

Jon loudly speaks over Arya’s complaint about the poor estimation of her years at the time with a roll of his eyes. “How is she? How was Ygritte when you saw her?”

Arya turns her attention back to Jon with a self-satisfied smile, pleased that her brother hasn't successfully shut the conversation down. “Good. She looked good. I _liked_ Ygritte,” she says pointedly. “You should call her.”

“She lives in what... Kentucky, doesn’t she?” Robb asks.

“They have phones in Kentucky,” Jeyne says, sweetly enough that she manages to make it not sound sarcastic.

Robb crosses his arms over his chest, glaring at Jon from across the space.

“Yeah, they got phones.” Jon tips his glass, watching the amber whiskey flood over the cubes of ice. “She might not want to hear from me though.”

“Then call her to tell her you’re an ass,” Arya says, slumping back on the sofa.

“How do you know I was the asshole in that situation?”

“Guys usually are,” Arya says with a shrug.

Jeyne bites her lip like she’s trying not to smile.

“Maybe,” Jon admits.

“The last thing you need is to be calling old girlfriends,” Robb says, eyes flicking from Jon to Sansa and back again.

Jon wishes he wouldn’t do that. It feels like the looks he’s giving Jon are as subtle as a sledgehammer. His comments bizarrely antagonistic to anyone who thinks Jon is single and has an ex in town, who might not hate hearing from him.

At least Sansa is engaged in conversation with Theon, untouched by the dynamic developing between the rest of them. Even if Theon is doing more of the talking and Sansa is doing more of the nodding and smiling.

Granted, Robb isn’t wrong. The last thing Jon needs is to complicate his life further. Just sitting next to Sansa, while he pretends his insides aren’t twisted in knots is more than enough drama.

“Yeah, I get that, thanks. I won’t be calling her.”

Arya pouts with a tilt of her head. “Did she break your heart, Jon?”

“No, I did that on my own.”

“How’s that?”

He rocks the glass back to the other side. “I broke it off, when I shouldn’t have.”

“Poor baby. Just dumb then, huh?”

“Always,” he agrees, finally lifting his glass up to take a drink.

“You don’t have to be dumb,” Robb says.

Arya cranes her head at her brother, face screwed up like he’s talking in tongues. “You have a lot of opinions about me running into Jon’s old girlfriend. Chill out.”

“Maybe it would be better for you not to meddle,” Robb counters. “None of us know the details, you know?”

He really wishes Robb would just shut up.

Especially when Sansa stands, shaking out her skirt, and snatches up her purse. He has a sinking feeling something they said reached her ears and upset her.

The “excuse me” she throws the group is not directed at anyone in particular, but Jon watches until she disappears through the entryway that leads out to the Cheshire’s lobby like she’s his to watch and worry about.

He should stop that as much as Robb needs to keep his mouth glued shut, but he can’t help himself.

“Is she okay?” Jon asks Theon, the only person who might know why she bolted.

Theon reaches for his yard glass, pulling a face. “Don’t know. I assume so.”

Jon leans back in the chair, trying to see farther down the hallway, as if she’ll somehow magically reappear if he looks hard enough. “Did she say where she was going?”

“No. She just popped up in the middle of my story. I lost her there at the end. Your conversation with Arya was more interesting,” Theon says, nudging Arya with his elbow. “What were you two talking about?”

“Ygritte,” Arya tells Theon.

“That old girlfriend of yours?” Theon asks. “She didn't go to our school.”

“That’s the one. I know that in spite of being an infant at the time,” Arya says.

“Just let it go,” Robb says, and Jon truly wishes she would.

“I was trying to convince Jon to look farther afield. It wouldn't hurt. She probably just went to the bathroom,” Arya adds for Jon’s benefit. “You’ll survive for five minutes.”

He gives her a flat smile.

“Farther afield is an ex? Isn’t that just a redo?” Theon asks, oblivious to Arya’s insinuation about his fixation on her sister or his inability to have her out of his field of vision for more than five minutes without a freak out.

But she’s wrong about just having to survive five minutes. More than five minutes pass, which Jon knows for a fact, because he pulls out his phone and keeps checking the time. At seven minutes, he puts his drink down, so he can focus on drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair and watching the doorway.

“Just check on her,” Jeyne suggests, her sympathetic tone forcing him to look away from the entryway he's been willing Sansa to come through.

“You think so?” he asks, although he's already pushing to his feet.

It's purely rhetorical: he doesn’t need a second opinion on whether he should go look for her, when he was ready two minutes ago to go after her.

He doesn't say he’ll be back. He might not be. Depends on where Sansa went.

He hopes to god she didn’t leave. Arya drove her, but she could have called an Uber and left. If he needs to chase after her, you have to valet here and it will take him a while to get his truck back. It feels like with every passing moment, he’s risking something. A deeper misunderstanding at the very least, which they don't need.

Jon turns right, heading the few steps down the hall to the registration desk. There’s only one person behind it, a woman with a tightly pulled back ponytail. She glances up when he strides into the space, which is markedly colder than the fire warmed tavern, thanks to the portico entrance to the hotel being within arm’s reach. The reception area is cramped. Hardly enough room for a generous amount of luggage stacked around a person’s feet. Difficult to miss anyone walking through too.

“Excuse me. Have you seen a woman walk by with red hair? Green dress?”

“Yeah,” she says, flashing one of those polite, automatic smiles. “Sure did. She came in with another woman about a half hour ago.”

“I mean leaving. Did she walk outside?”

“I don’t think so. Is she a guest? I can call her room for you,” she says, reaching for something below the counter.

“No, no thank you,” he says, already heading out.

Back past the narrow entrance to the tavern and into the main lobby with its even larger stone fireplace already decorated with an abundance of greenery and glass ornaments for Christmas, he scans the alcove seating. She’s not in the sitting area by the fire flanked by sofas. Or in the corner where they have a chess set and deep leather chairs. His feet thud on the old wide plank floors, as he stalks past the stuffed grizzly bear permanently menacing guests on its hind legs and the long bank of stained-glass windows.

The bathrooms are by the elevators, Jon remembers from a trip to Fox & Hounds, where he had enough to drink to require more than one trip. Maybe her morning sickness made an unwanted reappearance? That would explain why she hurried off as quickly as she did and the length of her disappearance. He spins in place in front of the elevators, trying to figure out where to look next, when a door creaks and he sidesteps the octagonal table with its giant orchid pot.

She doesn’t look pale, emerging from the bathroom, the way she did when she was nauseous all the time. Just her usual fair complexion and slightly rounder cheeks.

“There you are.”

Shifting her purse from one hand to the other, she stops before him.

“I was getting worried. Are you okay?”

She glances above the tapestry upholstered chairs, where a couple from another century are framed in dark gilded wood. She steps towards the dour pair, out of the flow of the non-existent foot traffic.

“You told Robb. I can tell he knows,” she says, voice strained.

 _Shit_. He knew Robb was being too goddamn obvious.

But he didn't tell Robb. Not like she thinks.

Jon inclines his head close to hers. “I didn’t tell him.”

Bragging, boasting to Robb about sleeping with his sister? Who would do that? Unless it was to announce they are a couple, it would be nothing short of a death wish to admit he’d slept with her but isn’t going to be acknowledging the baby. There’s no way he’d ever convince Robb that's the way Sansa prefers things.

But what he did tell Robb has already changed things. Whatever he hoped to do by swearing Robb to secrecy, Jon is not going to be able to spare her the anxiety. He has to come clean about what transpired between them.

He clasps her elbow but lets her go, when she pulls her arm in closer to her side.

“I see the looks he’s giving you. And me. What he was saying to you in there about Ygritte. He knows.”

Part of Jon worried Robb would try to joke the truth of Jon’s feelings for Sansa out of him publicly. It wasn’t that bad. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter that he was somewhat restrained: Sansa is more observant than any of them.

Not even two weeks later and it’s all unraveling.

“Okay. Yeah, he asked about the baby. But I lied straight to his face. My best friend, Sans. I did not tell him about us.”

“He asked about—” she starts, looking down at herself and back up at him. “Why would he ask?”

“Because you left my family medical history out. He saw it.”

She pulls her purse in higher over her stomach. “What?”

“When he came over to fix your faucet? You’d left it out on the counter.”

“You know about the faucet?”

It's the wrong thing to be focused on, but he knows what it’s like to have this damning information thrown at you and feel like the earth is shifting beneath your feet.

“Yeah, because he came over to beat the crap out of me after he fixed it for you.”

Her hand reaches up like she might touch his face, but it doesn’t make it all the way before her fingers curl into her palm. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, I'm fine. I'm fine, it's okay. Because I _lied_ to him.”

For over an hour, Jon kept it up, since Robb decided not to leave after they shared the first beer. It was a Midwestern goodbye, which Jon could have done without. He’s never wanted Robb to leave so badly. Lying to Robb is not a familiar sensation.

A man with a small fluffy white dog in his arms bundles past them, his shoes announcing his presence seconds before he comes into view. Jon distractedly watches him press the elevator button with his elbow. He gives them a polite nod. Jon nods back, while Sansa turns in towards the wall like she's hoping to fade into it.

As the elevator dings, Jon grabs her floating hand and draws her over the black and white marble tile. Their voices carry here. It’s better farther down the hallway, where the windows open onto the pool with the large red lion painted on the bottom. Even at this time of year, it smells like chlorine here, something soaked into the upholstery or paint.

“Why’d you have him fix your faucet anyway? I would have come.”

“It felt weird. After what happened that morning,” she says, her eyes darting away from him. She frees her hand from his grip and lifts it to her brow. “I must have forgotten I’d left it out. I’m so tired. I can’t even keep my place straight.”

It looked fine to Jon, but Sansa likes everything just so. It’s entirely possible that he wouldn’t even notice the things she considered out of place.

“I’m not sleeping,” she adds, rubbing the heel of her palm along her brow.

God, he feels the strain in her voice square in his chest.

“I’ll help, honey. I told you I’d help with whatever.”

She drops her arm to her side with a heavy sigh. “And then what happens when you come over?”

He straightens up, stung by the accusation. “I can keep my hands to myself.”

“I can’t.”

He blinks. The hallway is bizarrely quiet. Quiet enough that he can hear as he licks his lower lip and scrubs the back of his neck, while she looks back at him with wide eyes.

“Well, you don’t have to,” he finally says, still trying to figure out whether she really meant what he thinks she meant.

How does she view the things that have passed between them? He thought he was to blame on all counts.

His assertion hangs there between him, leaving the hallway silent again. The leather of her purse rubbing against the knit of her dress sounds amplified, as she twists to look back towards the lobby away from him.

She doesn't want to hear what he has to say. He's losing her even as she stands right before him.

“Sans—” he says, trying to pull her back to the subject.

Because he wants her to know, this can be whatever she wants it to be. He's ready for more. For everything. He was ready months ago.

But when she faces him again, she evades him, trading one topic for another. “What did you tell Robb? Because you told him something.”

With a frustrated sound, he forces his hand through his hair. “I told him you asked me to be the donor. Which you did,” he says, gesturing to the side. “I'm sorry. I didn’t have a choice. He thought I got you pregnant.”

“That’s literally what happened,” she says, face contorting. “We had sex. Twice. And I got pregnant.”

“Christ,” he says, nearly as shocked by her pronouncement here out loud in the hallway of the Cheshire as he was when she first told him she was pregnant.

 _Almost_.

This is not a topic they bring up. Not directly. They dance around it even when things get flirty. Like it never happened.

Except it did, and it's a well-worn memory for Jon at this point, as much as he's thought about it.

“I know, Sans.”

“And you barely talked to me back there.”

“You were too busy talking to Theon.”

“Oh, come on,” she says with a skyward flick of her eyes.

“He's acting like he's ready to take you the fuck home as best I can tell. I could have ripped both his arms off when he touched you.”

He sees it again and feels the same rush of adrenaline flood his limbs.

“ _Jon_.”

“I don’t get to touch you like that. I’d never assume I could just touch you like that.”

“He didn't just touch me, he asked, and you can too if you want.”

“Really?” If so, it’s news to him. It’s his baby but he’d never think to put his hands on her belly without invitation. “Because I don’t know where we stand and it’s starting to make me crazy.”

He exhales hard. He doesn't want to yell. He knows if he gets loud, it's all over.

“Everything is messed up,” she whispers.

He grabs both of her arms, pulling her back another two steps and turning her so no one coming from the elevators might see her distress. She doesn’t like people to see her cry and he can see from the line between her brows and the uptick of her lips, she's struggling not to.

“It doesn’t have to be. Hey,” he says, giving her arms a gentle jostle to get her to look up at him. “It doesn’t have to be messed up.”

They can be a real couple expecting a baby. They can rewind all the subterfuge and weather whatever opinions people have about how they’ve handled things. They can really make a go of it, and none of the rest of it will matter eventually. This bullshit will be a footnote in their history someday.

If she wants him. If she’ll trust him.

“I thought it was really great sex. Is that ridiculous?” she asks, lower lip quivering. “It meant something to me. I don't just sleep with people.”

His panic increases. Hands shaking, pulse racing. He’s never had a talk like this with a girl who is on the verge of crying. The crying requires one kind of response at odds with the nature of the topic.

“Hey, hey, honey—”

“I don’t know. Maybe all the sex I’ve had has been so bad I don’t have anything to judge it by.”

“Fuck. It was good. It was fucking amazing. For me too, okay?”

“I was really happy,” she says, as one fat tear and then another starts to fall. He tries to draw her into his chest, but she stops him with one outstretched hand. “Don’t. I won’t be able to stop.”

Stop what?

_Crying?_

She said she can’t keep her hands to herself. He doesn’t know what to make of that, because she’s the one that put the brakes on them. He's been operating ever since on the assumption he wanted her more than she ever wanted him.

“You all right?” he asks, as she tucks her hair behind her ear.

She nods with a sniff, wiping at each eye with her wrist.

Maybe she feels differently than she did a couple of months ago. Maybe if he just put it all out there, they’d finally get somewhere. Or he could make it all worse. Whatever the outcome, though, he has to take the chance.

“Okay. I just need you to know, I was happy too. I’d—” He stops to collect himself, glancing down at the ground, as his heart hammers in his chest. “I’d wanted something between us for a while. But then you made it pretty clear to me that you didn’t want this,” he says, gesturing between them. “And I’m trying to be respectful of your wishes. Not always doing the best job, because it’s hard and my feelings are the same, but I’m fucking trying.”

She wraps an arm around herself. “You think I don’t want you?”

“Well—” He scratches his temple. “What am I supposed to think?”

“I’m trying not to ruin your life.”

He swallows. “What are you talking about?”

“You agreed to be a donor. Not a father. And our flirtation wouldn’t have ever gotten that far if it wasn’t for my asking you to be the donor.”

“That’s what you believe?”

Why couldn't it be that things would have progressed between them regardless? Is it really so impossible?

“I’m a grenade about to go off in your life, and I know if I asked, you’re decent enough that you’d try to stick it out with me or for the baby just because you think it’s the right thing. I won’t let that happen.”

“Sansa, what are you trying to protect me from? I’m not being decent. I'm in love with you.”

“Hey,” a voice shouts much too loudly for a quiet hotel.

Jon’s head snaps up. Sansa twists. They know that voice.

“ _Here’s_ the happy couple,” Arya says, sauntering over the marble towards them. She jerks her finger behind her. “You gonna come back to the bar or should I just tell everyone you’re fighting as a prelude to something kinky I don’t want to know about it?”

“Tell her to go away,” Sansa says, putting her back to her sister.

“I’ll go,” Arya says, linking her arm through Sansa’s. “Is he upsetting you?” she says more softly, the teasing disappearing from her voice.

Sansa gives a stiff shake of her head.

“Better not be,” Arya says with a tight smile.

“We are in the middle of something though. We'll be back in a second,” Jon says.

It's a lie. He has no idea how long they'll be or if they're coming back. He would happily bundle her into his truck and leave if that's what she wanted to do.

“Okay. But you should know Robb told me about your little arrangement. You two. The baby.”

So much for Robb’s promise.

Sansa’s eyes slowly close. She’s not surprised. This is why she didn’t want anyone knowing about asking him to be the donor.

“It’s okay,” Arya says, nudging her sister in the side. “I can keep a secret. And not that I care, but I don’t actually believe your story.”

“You don’t have to believe it,” Sansa says coolly.

“IVF, _please_. The way you’re always staring at her?” Arya says, scrunching her face up at him. “You expect me to believe you didn’t—” She makes a clicking sound with her tongue.

“Grow up,” Sansa says, peeling her arm free.

“I’m just curious why you’re not telling the truth. Kind of weird.”

“Because I’m not interested in everyone’s opinion on who I wanted to be the donor. I chose Jon and that's my business alone.”

“Mmhmm, _donor_ ,” Arya says with a nod. “At least you don't have horrible taste.”

“I’m going to kill Robb.”

He says it either as a vow to Sansa or a threat for Arya to pass along, because whatever he says here in front of her… You tell one of them and it’s the same as telling all of them.

Arya holds up a finger. “Now, to be fair, he didn’t want to tell me. It’s not his fault. You guys are as subtle as a neon sign and then he was acting squirrely around you guys, getting all weird about Ygritte. I knew something was up.”

“Does everyone know Jon's the donor?” Sansa asks, smoothly reaffirming the lie with her. “He told all of you?”

“No, this is family stuff. I wouldn't ask in front of Theon and Jeyne. I put the screws to him up at the bar while we were ordering more drinks. Which reminds me, could you figure this not a couple thing out later? I don’t know if you’re aware, but we're here to eat as well as drink and Jeyne has this dumb idea that it would be rude to order without you.”

“We’ll be right there,” he promises again.

“Great. Oh,” Arya says, rocking back on her heels, “and when Mama figures this out, she’s not going to be happy with you two lying liars.”


	13. Stop Being Polite

The bedroom door creaks open, sending a pie shaped wedge of light flooding into the room. Curled on her left side, Sansa looks over her shoulder. It’s her sister in silhouette.

Sansa thought it might be her mom. Arya acts a little spooked by the whole pregnancy thing and today hasn't been a good day for that.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she answers too fast, because she's not okay, she's just trying not to completely panic.

Arya moves over the threshold, lifting her hand for the light switch. “Can I turn the lights on?”

“Leave them off.”

Arya closes the door behind her and pads silently in bare feet over to the far side of Sansa’s old bed. It’s three-quarter size, an antique, barely room for two, but Arya squeezes in behind her. The pillow they share rustles as Arya settles in. Sansa feels her bony shoulder pressing into her back. She smells like Budweiser from the game she and Robb were playing earlier, before Sansa ruined everyone’s Thanksgiving by emerging from the guest bathroom in tears and embarking on a flurry of phone calls and googling on her phone.

Her mother got involved, which means dinner will probably be late. Particularly since Sansa can’t help now.

“What did the nurse say?”

Sansa slides her steepled hands underneath the edge of the pillow. “It’s probably nothing. Just take it easy.”

 _Probably_ hasn’t quieted Sansa’s fears.

It being a holiday, it was a nurse from the exchange, and she’s not sure if her OB would have been more concerned or not.

Thanksgiving is ruined. Not only can she not help, she’s not feeling particularly thankful either.

She woke up feeling so hopeful too. Waking up to a text from Jon sent at an ungodly hour—just one word, _morning_ —she felt more optimistic than she has in ages. The last thing he’d done the night was pull her in to kiss her on the forehead before she got in Arya’s passenger seat. That kiss had the same energy as his pronouncement— _I’m in love with you._ If she could trust in that, maybe things would work out. She replied to his text with a heart and vowed to herself that her Black Friday task would involve opening up to him. That's how brave she felt.

Then she went to the bathroom in the midst of Thanksgiving prep with her mom and every good feeling about the future faded.

Different bathroom, different fear, but it brought her back. There’d been a split-second, when she looked down at that pregnancy test and her stomach lurched. Not in a good way. It was too much too soon: being pregnant meant kissing goodbye the possibility of a relationship with Jon. Even she’d wanted the baby first, she knew in that moment that she wanted the rest of it too, with Jon, and it was spoiled. Spoiled by the pregnancy.

And now she’s being punished for ever thinking it.

“Did you call Jon?”

Sansa twists in the bed, bumping shoulders with Arya as she adjusts onto her back “He’s out with his mom. Late lunch.”

“He didn’t answer?” her sister demands with the same defensive edge creeping into her tone as last night, when she found Sansa in tears with Jon in the hallway of the Cheshire.

Sansa’s head rolls to the side to look at the little sister. From the looks of her screwed up face, she's ready to chew out a good friend for her.

“No, I didn’t call.”

“So, text.”

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

Arya groans. “Oh my God, Sans. Stop trying to be polite. You’ll probably feel better if you call him.” She pokes her in the bicep. “You know I’m right. Jon’s pretty great.”

“Yeah, I know.”

When she tells Jon her fears, just his listening to them makes them feel smaller. He makes her feel safe.

“Do you though? Cuz you’re acting kind of dumb.”

There’s no pretense with Arya. She didn’t believe Jon was just a sperm donor, and Sansa doesn’t have the energy, emotional or physical, to pretend right now.

“Yes. Painfully aware actually.”

Arya pokes her again. “Like… rush over here to see you if he knew great, I’m betting.”

It’s tempting. She feels that helium balloon in her chest at the thought of him rushing to her. Being alone is hard, when there's someone out there you want to be going through it with, the good or bad.

“And Mama always makes enough to feed an army. What's one more?”

Nope. It’s not just the thought of him playing white knight, she feels genuinely woozy—maybe from being flat on her back. She pushes up until she’s propped against the headboard and immediately feels less lightheaded.

Arya follows suit, sitting upright. She wraps her arms around her legs and props her chin on her knees. “Phone dead?” Arya can dissect you with her eyes when she wants to. “You can use mine,” she says, knowing damn well that's not the problem.

“I don’t want to cause an issue by interrupting and having him run off in the middle of their lunch. His mom doesn’t know.”

“Of course,” her sister says with a roll of her eyes. “You’re aware it doesn’t have to be like this, right? Come clean to everybody. He’d sweep you off your feet or whatever it is you want if you’d let him.”

That's part of what has held her back—that he’ll do whatever he imagines she wants. As much as she appreciates how decent he is, she doesn’t want him to sacrifice himself for her. She doesn’t want to accept something less than the real thing from him either. She knows she deserves better than some chivalrous act.

But if he loves her? If he's in love with her?

“This stupid lie is standing in the way of you guys actually being happy. Honestly, why make up this whole story?”

“I didn't.”

Arya tilts her head, giving her that _are you kidding me?_ look. “Are you really that embarrassed you slept with him? Or couldn't figure out a condom?”

She wants to bite back that she knows how condoms work, but Arya would only tease her more.

She rubs her palm over the comforter, ditzy floral print, slightly faded from the southern exposure. She didn't take it with her, when she moved out. Didn't take much from home except the values she was raised with. She wanted to leave everything behind, certain there were better things out there, including more worldly, exciting people. She would have never believed it would all circle back to the boy down the lane.

She feels a little sorry for that version of herself, for failing to see the good right in front of her.

“I honestly asked him to be the donor.”

Arya frowns. “But he’s not just the donor,” she says, pointing at Sansa’s stomach. “So? What happened?”

“I dunno. Do the math. He’s hot.”

Her sister grimaces. “Gross.”

Sansa can’t help her smile, because there’s been no one to talk to about how great Jon is, how absolutely crazy she is about him, how he's been so good about everything. She couldn't even risk telling Mya. This is as close as she’s been able to get to gushing, since it all started to really hit her.

“Shut up. He is.”

“Fine, whatever,” Arya says with a shake of her head. “You’re allowed. Only because I love Jon.”

“No kidding. You get totally territorial about him.”

She shrugs. “If he’s going to be obsessed with a girl, it might as well be you.”

“What an endorsement.”

“How’s this? If you want to make a bunch of babies with him, go for it. I certainly don’t want to.”

Sansa drapes an arm over the top of her stomach. “Thank you for that actually.”

“Why?”

“For reminding me things could always be worse.”

Arya laughs. “Oh my God, wouldn’t that be something?” She shimmies back until she’s braced against the wooden headboard. “You and me being interested in the same guy is not something I ever imagined happening.”

“Thank God.”

Arya hums in agreement. “Okay, but as much as I love him, this still strikes me as a little bit questionable,” she says, holding up her fingers to indicate the measure of her concern. “Not because Jon isn’t awesome. It’s just kind of messy to ask someone to be a sperm donor, when there are feelings involved. Right? Less careful than you usually are.”

“Obviously,” she says, because yeah, it sounds monumentally stupid, “but I didn’t realize.”

“Shut up,” Arya says with a slap to Sansa's shoulder. “It got to the point, he'd barely gave me the time of day, when we were out together, he was so glued to you. He was so pathetic.”

“Well—”

“And!” she says, punctuated by another slap, “you had to have some kind of idea you were into him.”

“My old therapist would tell you that I’m very good at lying to myself.”

Arya snorts.

“Whatever my issues, in my defense, I don’t think he was into me.”

“You know, people think you're smart.”

Sansa elbows her sister, a little less playfully than her sister's slaps and Arya coughs hard. She's banking on the fact that she's protected from real retaliation by her pregnancy. Knowing her sister, she'll pay her back three months from now like clockwork.

“I _am_ smart. He really wasn't,” she insists. Not when she asked him to be her donor. Not like seriously. Attraction only takes you so far. There's just no way he thought about her like that until they were in the middle of this weird arrangement. “You have to admit, I am not Jon’s type.”

“Obviously you are.”

“Is that why you wanted him to call Ygritte? Because I’m such a good fit for him?”

Sansa couldn't focus on one word Theon was saying, once she picked up on what they were talking about, her sister trying to encourage Jon to call his ex, his first love, the kind of girl Sansa assumed Jon would end up with. Days earlier, Sansa kicked him out of her place, sent him off to his mom's in a state of frustration. It wasn't a rejection. Just a pause. Sansa very much didn't want to be on the wrong side of his mom, going forward.

But maybe all he needed was a push to find a less complicated situation. A hookup for the weekend. With a very not pregnant Ygritte. She was probably his first.

“Yeah, you'll boss him around the way he likes. Perfect fit.”

Sansa covers her eyes with her hand and squeezes her temples.

“I didn’t love that you brought her up.”

“Look, I didn’t want Jon moping around, while you had a baby and scoped out preschools or whatever, because he deserves to be happy. But obviously I wouldn't have said anything if I'd known. I'm not a bitch,” she says, holding her hands up. “I want you to be happy too, okay, so make the most of us all being together and fess up.”

Sansa lets her hand fall back to her stomach. She can feel something. A foot maybe. Or the head. Baby butt? She looks down at herself.

_Okay in there?_

Sara—ever since he suggested it, if it even counts as a suggestion, she's been trying the name out in her head.

Sara Stark. Sara Snow.

If she confesses everything and goes to him, maybe he'll convince her the baby is okay. That they're going to be okay.

The first reveal with her parents went so well that she's only now certain they're not upset with her for deciding to have a baby without telling anyone first. Walking that back with a new version of how this pregnancy came about would go over like a lead balloon.

It's a mess. Of her own creation.

“You know Mama hates him. She'll flip. She gives him that look and hardly speaks to him as it is.”

Jon absolutely does not deserve to be thrown into the role of boyfriend or whatever and father, which he didn't expect at all, and get treated poorly by her family in the bargain.

“Eh, I think Mama hates _his_ mama. Ms. Snow has known Daddy longer and he was always over there helping her out. Probably doesn't like the way it looks, you know?”

“Shut up. Daddy would never,” Sansa hisses back, because her parents are the picture of perfection in her mind.

“No, but that doesn’t mean Mama had to like it.”

Sansa's eyes cut to the closed door, outside of which, her mother is probably darting between the oven and the refrigerator and the sink over and over again. Without any help, unless she's decided to let Jeyne step in—a newcomer, which would really be something. Mama is fiercely protective, driven, and sometimes a little judgmental, but it’s hard to imagine her mother being insecure or petty, which is exactly what her sister is suggesting.

“Besides, you really shouldn’t make your life choices on the basis of whether of not Mama or Daddy are going to be happy about it. You gonna just pass on being with him, so no one comments on it?”

Arya might be accustomed to pushing back against expectations, but it doesn't sit easy with Sansa.

“No, it’s just easier when they're happy. Easier when all of you are onboard with something. You're a lot. I got to think it through.”

Plan out the right thing to say and when to say it. Somehow mitigate the fallout.

“Then good news. Robb’s 100 percent all about it, embarrassingly so, I’m cool, and Bran and Rickon are dummies, so we just need to tell Mama and Daddy.”

Arya slides off the bed, tugging on her t-shirt as her feet hit the floor. It's Thanksgiving and she could have made an effort to look nice, but she's in her usual t-shirt and jeans. And as usual, trying to make Sansa's life more difficult, when all she wants to do is curl up on her side here until dinner.

“Wait. Don’t. What are you doing?”

“Grabbing Mama for you.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Sansa says, stretching her arm out, though Arya is already halfway to the door. “Stop. She’s cooking.”

“I can stir for her or whatever,” she says with a dismissive wave. She won't, she won't stir a thing, except the figurative pot. “You’re going to text Jon and then you’re going to ask for a ride to his place.”

“Arya. Don’t. I mean it. Don't you go getting Mama.”

“Sorry. It's gonna have to be Mom. Robb and I played two rounds of Beer Pong, I’m no good to drive you.”


	14. Stop Protecting Yourself

_Are you at lunch?_

_No, home already._

_You having a good time?_

_Say hi for me. Or don’t. Whatever isn’t weird_

_I think we have to make it weird._

**…**

_Can I come over?_

The driver’s door closes with a thud and Sansa's mother adjusts the seat from the position her father left it in. They’re alone together in the insulated space, the considerable noise level of her childhood home on a holiday left behind and the sounds of the heavily wooded property blocked out. Just the silence and the bright greyish light coming through the windshield in slatted beams from the bare limbs overhead.

Knowing her mother, Sansa expects the quiet won’t last. They won't make the drive in silence. In fact, she almost can perfectly guess at the question that follows, as her mother moves her leather purse from her lap to the console and fixes Sansa with a look.

“Why don’t you tell me why we’re driving over to Jon Snow’s house in the middle of Thanksgiving.”

“Sorry about the timing. I know it’s terrible,” Sansa says, tugging on her seatbelt. It clicks. “I have to see him.”

If something is wrong, he’s the person she wants to be with. Anything else is unthinkable.

“Does he not have somewhere to go today? We could have invited him,” her mother says, eyes flitting to the steering column and back, as she inserts the key. “We still can.”

Jon might not be her mother's favorite person, but she's not the kind of person to let somebody sit at home alone on a holiday.

“No, he had lunch with his mom, although you know they all can eat again.”

“Men,” her mother agrees. “Then what is it?” she asks, turning the key in the ignition.

Classical music fills the car. She looks to the digital display: Beethoven, Symphony No. 6.

Her mother doesn't pull forward. She's waiting.

Sansa isn't going to get away with vague answers. She has to admit the truth to herself, to her mother, to Jon.

She wants Jon. She wants the whole picture. She wants so much that it's frightening.

But sharing anything less than the whole truth would only get in the way of the possibility of a future together. Something good and real. She has a chance at that and she has to take it.

“The baby is his,” Sansa says over the music.

She pauses to swallow.

Her mother’s face is a mask beside her, betraying no hint of what she makes of Sansa's confession. She's heard, she’s too still not to have heard, but she ventures no response.

She's in shock maybe. Sansa can’t even remember the last time her mother saw her and Jon in the same room together. It has to feel like a complete impossibility, that Sansa is pregnant with Jon Snow's child.

The music swells. Her current state of anxiety makes the sound unbearable. She wants to scream and her hand darts out to slap the radio button.

The relief only lasts a second. It quickly turns deafening with her mother looking on, blue eyes only moving enough to scan her daughter's face, as Sansa wets her lips and tries again. “Jon’s the father.”

Her mother’s hands flatten against the wheel. “He’s your anonymous sperm donor?”

Sansa looks down at her lap, where her purse and phone sit in the hammock created by the maternity dress she picked out for Thanksgiving with high hopes for the day and the weekend and the future, still buoyed by Jon’s words and his gentle kiss outside Arya’s car. When he waited with them for the valet to return with the car, she’d almost told Arya she’d get a ride with Jon, but she’d wanted to let it settle first, his confession. She wanted to think through what her next move should be.

Cautious.

But where has caution gotten her the past few months?

She hums, tilting her head left and right, as her fingers fiddle with the phone’s lock screen, bringing up Jon’s last text once more.

 _Yes. Always_. 

“It was supposed to work out that way. That was my plan, which he’d agreed to.”

Whatever unkind thoughts her mother has ever entertained about Jon, she’s liable to be thinking all of them now, running through the list of why he wouldn't be a suitable choice for a sperm donor for her grandchild.

Her chest feels tight, bracing for a defense of her choice and of Jon.

“But?” her mother prods, her hands still stiffly splayed against the wheel, having made no move to remove the car from park.

“Stuff happened.”

Her mother’s brows climb higher. “Stuff.”

Sansa is known for her social graces and poise. For making people feel at ease. For having a way with words.

This is not one of those moments.

She might have worked up some mature explanation of the events that brought her to this point if given the time. The scare, which _probably_ is nothing, means there's not much time to work on her delivery. Not if she wants to get over to Jon and feel his arms around her.

“Yes. We… I don’t know,” she says, shoulders lifting and falling.

No doubt, her failure to speak clearly on the circumstances doesn’t engender much confidence on her mother’s end. But the bare truth sounds tawdry, and she can’t summon the playful tone she adopted with Arya, admitting how she ended up pregnant the old-fashioned way with this baby.

As much as she loves her mama, conversations about boyfriends never veered into this territory before.

Her mother wouldn’t ever expect her to be a virgin. It isn’t 1950 and though her mother is religious, she doesn’t belong to a church that pushes some kind of outdated emphasis on female purity. Nevertheless, admitting she slept with Jon makes her feel sixteen again.

“I see.” Her mother turns to face the wheel. She makes a clicking sound with her tongue. “Oh, Sansa.”

Her voice is laden with something heavy. Could very well be disappointment. Of all the things Catelyn Stark might have worried about, she never thought to worry her eldest daughter might end up unwed and pregnant.

Looking down, Sansa sucks her bottom lip in, biting down with her eyetooth. The sting isn’t enough of a distraction. She still feels it, the hollow gap forming in her chest.

She hates letting her parents down. She's driven to please, not cause distress.

“I didn’t think that boy was that kind of man.”

“What?” Sansa says, head snapping back up.

“Jon Snow,” she says, fingers curling around the wheel. “I had the impression he was a… good man.”

“He is. He is a good man,” Sansa says.

Her words come so fast, one word tripping over the next, in her eagerness to come to his defense. It probably sounds as if she’s not really confident in that fact. Over compensating.

She's not. Through all of this, the one thing she always knew was what kind of man Jon is.

He was just going to be someone else's ideal boyfriend or husband, maybe some other child's father too, someday.

Her mother’s eyes slip closed. “Sansa.”

Sansa has been wrong about boys and men before. That’s why she didn’t want to tell them she’d chosen Jon. While she knew in her heart he was the best choice, she worried everyone unfairly would question her decision making.

“I’m right about him, Mama. He’s not a villain in this. I swear. I could show you,” she says, giving her phone a shake. It wakes up and there it is again for a fleeting moment, his assurance that she's always welcome. “I could show you how I’ve thrown things at him maybe unfairly and he just sticks it out. He’s the best.”

“You had to lie for him.”

“This fabrication was all mine. Not Jon’s. Not his idea.”

“Dear Lord, Sansa,” her mother cranes her head towards the house, “what is your father going to say? Your first announcement was one kind of shock. It felt like that came out of leftfield. Now this?”

“I know. I promise I won’t lie anymore to you or Daddy or anyone. The whole truth is that the baby is Jon’s and if something is wrong with the baby, I need him to know, I need to see him, I want to see him. He’s been there every time I was scared. And I’m really sorry I lied, I’m sorry it’s Thanksgiving and I haven’t been able to help and now I’ve interrupted everything with my emergency—”

Her mother’s hand stretches across the console to seize her hand. It knocks her purse off, but she doesn't go to grab it, letting it fall, as she squeezes Sansa's hand. Sansa's heart gives a lurch.

“Listen, Sansa. Nothing bad is going to happen today. You are fine and so is the baby. I promise. Hmm?”

Sansa nods stiffly and squeezes back.

“And I don’t mind an interruption. Not when it comes to you.”

She nods again, head tipping down.

“I don't like being lied to though. So, now,” her mother says, letting loose of her hand to grab the gear shift, “you’ve got about five minutes from here to Jon’s house to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

“Okay,” Sansa says, clearing her throat of the tears that threaten to choke her, as the car crunches over the gravel drive.

“Why don’t you start with why you lied to us.”

“I didn’t want him to feel trapped by an accident.”

Her mother slows at the end of the drive, looking left and right and not meeting her eyes as she asks, “Did he make you feel that way?”

Her answer is firm. “No.”

He’s been attentive and supportive, the very opposite.

“But he doesn’t want the baby?”

Sansa waits out the sound of the wheels switching to pavement. “I didn’t really ask.”

Her mother pulls a face. “That’s an important piece of this. Don’t you think?”

Yes, but she was afraid of his answer. She wanted the baby and that had to suffice. She couldn’t let herself want too much and risk everything.

The way he’s acted, the way he’s been there through it all, however, he either really is that decent or he wants the baby, at least a little. Maybe more than a little.

Her head swivels automatically to the right out the passenger side, where she can see Ms. Snow’s house peeking through the tall oaks. Her car is in the attached carport. You don’t need a car to get from their place to Jon’s mom’s. It’s just a quick jog. Robb and Jon made that run back and forth hundreds of thousands of times.

Sansa hasn’t been on the inside of the rental since she was a little girl. She only has the dimmest memories of what it’s like. It could very well be different now. Ms. Snow has a better job than she did when they were kids, and Jon might have redone the place for her after she bought it from Ned Stark a couple years ago.

Sansa traces the leather piping on the upholstered car door with her index finger. “He built me a crib. Just showed up with it the other day as a surprise, and it’s beautiful, really beautiful.”

Her mother gives her a quick sideways glance. “Sweetheart. Heavily laden symbols are not the same as a real conversation. If you never asked him if he wants the baby, it’s about time you did.”

“I know. I just didn’t want him to feel like he had to step in and save the day. Obligated, you know?”

“It is an obligation. A life long one,” her mother says, gliding to a stop at the end of the lane and putting on her indicator.

Her mother didn’t grow up in the country. Even after years of living out here, she drives like she’s in the suburbs, obeying speed limits for the most part and using indicators on empty roads. It ticks off the seconds her mother pauses before making the turn.

“I don’t want to ruin his life.”

Her mother gives her a look that might as well be a carbon copy of the one Arya gave her back in the bedroom. “While I’m always more concerned about my children than not, given your situation, I’m not all that worried about a painful alteration in his lifestyle.”

Sansa bites back a smile: calling Jon’s habits a _lifestyle_ makes it sound a lot more interesting than it really is.

The car starts forward again, making the turn onto highway F. Two more turns and they’ll be at his place. Precious little time to convince her mother Jon is not the bad guy in this.

“What happened between us wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for my asking him to be the donor. That’s on me. It made things weird and intense,” she says, resorting to an inept summary once again.

“However the situation _developed_ , it does take two. I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten how it works. He’s a grown man, and given his personal circumstances, he should understand the importance of doing the right thing by a mother and a child.”

“If I’d let him, he would absolutely try, but that’s not what I want from him.”

The state highway looks a little desolate this time of year—yellowed grass, trees beyond the ditch alongside fence lines devoid of leaves—but Sansa watches the scenery with what must appear to be rapt interest.

“What then?”

Sansa gives a little shrug, as her mother gives her a quick look. “More.”

“You’re trying to protect yourself then. Not him.”

“Both.”

“Just because you’re having a child with a man, you don’t have to be with him. Don’t think for a moment that’s what your father and I would want you to do for appearance's sake.”

“Especially don’t do that with Jon,” she says, knowing as the words leave her mouth that she sounds petulant.

“No. Just don’t let yourself get carried away by a romanticized vision of that scenario.”

“I was going to do it alone, Mama. With him as a donor. No romance. I know the difference.”

Whatever her personal tendency towards the romantic, she isn’t trying to settle for Jon, so she might fulfill some fictional ideal.

As her mother slows for their turn, she sighs again. “And yet, something like romance must have happened. That is what you’re telling me, right?”

Sansa is steadying herself to defend that she did not stick to her practical no-romance plan for having a baby, when her mother continues, “So, if you’re in love with him, you have to tell him. Tell him or you’ll regret it.”

Lips parting in a taste of the shock her mother must have felt only minutes ago, Sansa twists, draping her arm over her belly, as she looks over at her mother. “I know you don’t like him.”

“I don’t _not_ like him.”

“Mama, come on.”

Her hand flexes against the wheel. “He should have gone to college. He sold himself short.”

It wasn’t like he didn’t think he wasn’t smart enough to attend school. “His financial situation was different than mine and Robb’s and you know that. His interests were different too.”

“I’m well aware. It just isn’t what I would have wanted for one of my children.”

Her mama didn't warm to Jon from the start. Her issues with him date from long before he didn't fill out a college application.

Maybe Arya's right, and if it isn't really about Jon, maybe her mama can come around.

“He’s so good at what he does, Mama.”

The corners of her mama’s mouth lift in a sort of sympathetic smile. “He's done well for himself. Lyanna has every right to be proud, hut he leads a very different life from the one you’ve always wanted. Out here. He’s never going to have the big high-flying job or—”

“I don’t care about that.”

Working on his craft, a big yard, stars overhead, it sounds pretty good actually. Especially with him. He just needs a couple of big dogs, maybe those chickens and goats she teased him about.

It’s not like he’s asked her to move in, but if they ever got to that point, she wouldn’t reject the idea out of hand. It’d be too far to drive to her current job, but she could find something else. Maybe she could even focus on what she actually likes to do too, rather than working for someone else to pay rent and secure herself healthcare.

“Suddenly you want something totally different in life?”

“Not so suddenly.” Sansa was quick to get out and quick to regret it too. She just hid all her regret behind the usual smiles and bright enthusiasm. If anything, falling for Jon has only solidified for her that she was in too big of a hurry to discount the good things that were right there in front of her. “Did you always want to live out in the sticks?” she asks, knowing the answer.

Defiance, Missouri certainly wasn't in Catelyn Tully's life plan until it suddenly was.

“Well, you're mine, and I wouldn’t want to see you settle for something less than what you want, because of some bad choices.”

“Do you mean the baby?” Sansa asks, her hand sliding over herself.

Her mother smiles as she brakes. “No, we’ll leave my perfect grandchild out of this.”

They’re here.

Jon’s house sits back from the road, his front yard dotted with four oaks and a huge hickory tree the builders had the good sense not to cut down. The newer developments look like they were corn fields last week and neighborhoods the next, totally devoid of trees or landscaping. _Devoid of soul_ , Jon said, when she was complaining about one of her favorite trail ride areas being bulldozed under last spring.

“If he's what you want, we’ll leave it up to Jon to impress us in regards to you and the baby, who is going to be just fine,” she adds, inclining her head towards Sansa, as the car rocks, moving over the curb onto his driveway.

“He’s as great as Daddy is, Mama.”

“I don't know about that, but I can understand why he’d want you. Which it looks like he does.” She nods through the windshield. There he stands, arms crossed and feet astride on the sidewalk leading to his door, already waiting. “I will grant that he’s handsome, but I hope he didn’t wear that to Thanksgiving with his mother.”

Sansa smiles, lightness filling her chest at the sight of him. Jeans and t-shirt and all. “He looks amazing in a suit.”


	15. It's A Lot

Something about the text worried him. The wording maybe. That or it’s hope, making his pulse jump and his hands jittery. Jon can’t tell, as he stands, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, watching the Stark’s car pulls down his driveway.

The light reflects off the windshield and then is dimmed by the shadow of one of the tall trees shading the front yard, so he can see inside. Sansa and Mrs. Stark, strikingly similar save for a shade difference in their hair. Well, the hair and the looks on their faces, but Jon wouldn’t expect Mrs. Stark to look pleased to be dropping anyone off at his house: she must have put a hold on Thanksgiving dinner in order to drive Sansa over.

A strange choice on Sansa's part, for sure.

Robb or Arya could have brought her. Or Sansa could have waited until they’d eaten to come by. He wasn’t expecting to see her today at all, considering what Thanksgiving—what every holiday—is like at the Starks. It’s a big deal. A whole production, totally different on scale from what he and his mom do to celebrate.

And Sansa ditched that and dragged her mom into it. Which makes it feel like an emergency, a bad one.

No, he’s definitely worried.

“Hey,” he calls out, as Sansa’s car door swings open.

Raising a cold hand in greeting to Mrs. Stark, he strides down his sidewalk.

If she waves back, he misses it. He’s too focused on Sansa.

She’s not dressed warm enough, legs bare and the floral-patterned fabric of her dress looking flimsy as the wind catches the hem. Since she got pregnant, she swears she’s always hot, but the cold has his shoulders creeping towards his ears and he’s wearing a hell of a lot more than she is.

It makes him want to bundle her inside, find that wool blanket he has folded away somewhere, and start the fire in the fireplace he never uses.

She’s so goddamn beautiful.

He doesn’t make it to the end of the sidewalk. Unfolding his arms to reach out for a one-armed hug that won’t be out of line with her mother watching through the windshield, he gets tangled with her, as her hands lift to entwine behind his neck. He lets himself be pulled, head following the pressure of her fingers sliding up into his hair, and there her mouth is, waiting like an answer to a question.

The first time he kissed her, he knew. Heart swooshing in his chest like a stone hitting the water, he was sunk. He’s known her his whole life, and all it took was one kiss to know.

It’s like that now, chest inflating, gut churningly good.

Her soft lips close over his lower lip, as her body shifts against him. She gains an inch as she goes to her toes. Like she might just climb him, which would be a goddamn relief. An actual Thanksgiving miracle. The light brush of her tongue against the seam of his mouth sends a jolt through him. It’s good enough that all he wants to do is slide his hand up her back and fit her against him until the thin light of day can’t find a chink between them. Hike up her skirt to grasp her thigh. Deepen the kiss until she’s limp in his arms.

He settles for a hand in the small of her back, as his head tilts to kiss her more firmly.

He hasn’t kissed her nearly enough. If there could ever be enough. It feels like a bottomless need.

She breaks the kiss, leaving his wet lips cold. Too soon. He chases her mouth. She meets him again with a gentle kiss and a bump of his nose. And again—kiss and bump. The sweetness of it makes his breath catch.

His fingertips press into her back, holding her fast in case she thinks of pulling away. She’s here, kissing him, almost inconceivably after everything, and he doesn’t want to let go.

His brows knit at the tingle her thumb tracing the ridge of his jaw shoots up his back. That and the noise she makes, a soft hum he can feel like a vibration in his chest.

He knows that sound. It’s seared in his brain. Even though he’s not inside her, it elicits the same zing of satisfaction.

He wants to be the one to draw that sound from her. Always.

“Jon.”

He hums back. He can’t actually speak with his brain hung up on something other than speech.

“I’m in love with you too.”

Her breath puffs against his lips. Blue eyes huge this close stare expectantly up at him, waiting.

His heart is in his throat. Pounding hard enough he should hear it, instead of the wind blowing through the brittle leaves overhead.

All his senses are suddenly sharpened. From the heat of her body everywhere she touches him to the crinkly soft texture of her dress against his fingertips. The musky-sweet smell of decaying plant matter and the lingering taste of those lemon drop candies she’s always popping, when he swipes his tongue over his lip. Stray auburn strands of hair blow before her flushed face. He lifts a hand to sweep them away, and eyes closing, presses his forehead to hers.

“I love you,” she repeats.

It forces a smile from him, her second whispered confession.

Smiling against her mouth, he nudges her nose back.

“Oh damn, honey,” he says on an exhale. “I love you too.”

At first it was a feeling. Intense, consuming, and ultimately inconvenient. But by the time he said it out loud—the second time, not drunk but sober in the hallway of the Cheshire—it was more than a feeling. It was a commitment. To her and the baby, to everything if she wants it.

His arm slides, wrapping around her tighter, until he pulls her nearly off the ground, her toes reaching for the ground. She can’t be close enough, not even with her belly pressing into him and her fingers still smoothing over his jaw and back over his scalp.

Every time they’ve kissed, her nails end up trailing through his hair. It makes him twitch. The way she touches him makes him crazy. It feels like she's cherishing him.

 _Fuck_.

Then he hears it, a car window. The motor, the drag of the glass against the rubber seal, one giant rude awakening.

All that hyper awareness and still he managed to forget they have an audience of one.

It’s like being caught when you’re seventeen with your girlfriend in your room. Ygritte could literally scale anything. Worse though, because he’d really like to improve on what Mrs. Stark thinks of him, and mauling her daughter while she looks on probably didn’t move the needle in the right direction.

His face burns, as he lets Sansa settle back flat on the ground. She makes an annoyed sound that's nearly identical to the one she makes in pleasure, and he sucks air through his teeth.

When Sansa texted, saying they might need to make it weird, he didn’t envision this kind of holiday display. But, he loses his head with her. That’s why they’re not just two people with a certain kind of history trying to work things out, but two people trying to figure it out with a baby on the way. It’s the most recklessness act of his adult life.

And he can't even begin to regret it.

“You drove over here to tell me and also brought your mom?” he asks, as Mrs. Stark’s head appears out the window.

Sansa has a driver’s license, for God’s sake. She could have borrowed one of their cars. Or asked Arya to drop her off, since Arya’s already on to their shit.

Anything but dragging him down for a kiss in front of her mother on Thanksgiving.

She’s lost her damn mind.

But whatever explanation she might think to make, she can’t get it out before Mrs. Stark calls out to him.

He raises his hand, once more in greeting, as Sansa turns into his side, her hand distractingly sliding over his lower stomach.

“Yes, ma’am,” he shouts back, throat tight. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

Mrs. Stark's smile is a twitch, there and gone. “Yes. Same to you, Jon. Please say hello to your mother for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her brows lift, gaze shifting from him to her daughter pinned to his side. “Sansa is supposed to be staying off her feet. You might want to get her inside.”

He looks down at the crown of red hair resting against his shoulder. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” Sansa says with a quick shake of her head. “Just uh, just some spotting earlier?”

His whole body tenses. He knows that worried, high voice of hers.

“Not quite bedrest, but she should take it easy for the day. I’m sure she’ll give you the details,” Mrs. Stark says, speaking loud enough to be heard over the car engine.

“Christ,” he curses, bending to scoop Sansa up.

She yelps. Her eyes go wide and her hands scramble to grab hold, as he hoists her up.

“What are you—”

“Carrying you,” he interrupts, earning a shocked kind of silence from her as her face begins to go as red as his has felt, since he remembered Mrs. Stark's presence.

 _Goddamn it_. “Why didn’t you call me?”

He'd have been there in an instant. Broken every speed limit and traffic sign along the way, so he could be at her side immediately. Made up ten ridiculous excuses for why he was standing at the Stark's door too. Whatever he had to do.

“I didn’t want to interrupt.”

He hates this shit. Hates not being with her and there for her.

“Jon?” Mrs. Stark calls out again, and he stops, widening his stance against the weight of Sansa shifting in his arms.

“Sansa will be all right, I'm sure. But you let me know whether I can send one of the boys over with a couple plates or if you two want to join us for dinner. Either way.”

“What are you doing?” Sansa repeats, as he swings her around, barely getting a thank you out to her mother, as he adjusts his grip on her and picks his way over the sidewalk.

Why'd he never notice before these uneven pads of concrete?

“What’s it look like?” he grunts.

He can’t afford to trip while he’s holding her, and he huffs, craning his head to the side to see where he’s stepping, as he reaches the front stoop.

“I’m too heavy.”

“You’re not.”

“I am!” she squeaks, as he shoulders open his front door.

“I’m not going to drop you, and you know, Sans, you weren’t worried about it a few days ago.”

Height of romance: make a crib, drop it off as a surprise, fuck. It certainly hadn’t been the plan, when he brought the crib over, but when things seemed to be trending that way, he was really fucking good with it.

It was only after that he wondered whether he’d messed things up even worse by not talking things through with her first. Always leading with his goddamn dick. No matter how enthusiastic she seemed at the time, she did end up kicking him out as soon as they were interrupted, which made him think it'd been a bad move.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking straight,” she says, as he kicks at the door to slam it shut behind them. “I get funny when we kiss.”

“Should you lie down?”

This isn’t the way he ever imagined her ending up in his bed.

“No,” she says with a toss of her head. “Sofa is fine.”

He settles her sideways on his sofa. She toes her flats off, letting them fall to the hardwood floor, while he grabs a pillow, not one of her pretty ones—these linen ones came with the sofa—and wedges it behind her back. Crouching down beside her, he asks if she wants some water. If he could do something for her, it might alleviate some of this helpless feeling of paralysis stealing down his limbs.

“I’m okay,” she insists, but as he wraps a hand around her arm, her face begins to pinch.

He swallows around the lump in his throat. It feels like his heart is outside of his body.

“Tell me what happened.”

Her free hand pulls a thick hank of hair over her shoulder and in swift synchronization, her features smooth out like hitting reset.

“It happened a couple hours ago. At my parents’. Not anything since. That's a good sign.” She fiddles with the dress’ tie, the thin belt that rests above her belly. “I was just freaked out by it, and then I started counting kicks, which you know only makes me more nervous.”

“Yeah.”

One time he sat on the phone with her, while she drank a cold glass of water and laid on her side, counting.

He rubs his thumb over the fine bone of her arm. Her sleeves only come part of the way down, exposing her fair skin with its blueish veins visible underneath. She’s brave and strong, and yet, they’re all fragile, just flesh and blood, and when she gets scared like this about the baby, he feels the truth of their vulnerability in a way he never did before.

He wants to ask what counts as spotting. How much blood? But if she doesn't volunteer details, he doesn't want to pull them from her and increase her anxiety.

“You call the exchange?”

She nods. “It’s probably nothing. Stay off my feet for today just as a precaution. I should be okay like my mom said.”

“Okay.” He squeezes her arm. “Okay. Shit. Did you end up Googling it?”

He knows she did. Probably as soon as she discovered the spotting, her hands flew to her phone, tapping away with shaking fingers.

If he’d been with her, he could have called for her. Held her. Something.

Instead, he was eating lunch at Chandler Hill Winery. At least it wasn’t Cracker Barrel. That’s all he and his mom could afford once upon a time, and while he knows he shouldn’t feel embarrassed about his situation in life, he doesn’t want to be the guy at Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving. He wants to be able to give Sansa and their baby something better than that. Something he's figuratively carved out for himself, for them all.

“First result said there’s nothing to be concerned about, but a little digging and I was able to come up with some super disturbing worst-case scenarios.”

“Okay. Put that out of your head. It’s good the nurse at the exchange wasn’t worried. That’s good, Sans.”

“I am though—worried.”

He’s worried too. It’s a funny euphemism really, because actually, he’s fucking terrified something is wrong and that everything will slip right through his fingers, when they should finally be getting on some solid footing.

She covers his hand with hers, stretching her arm over her belly. “That’s why I needed to come over here. I just… can’t keep doing this.”

He’s not sure what _this_ means. There are a bunch of things they’ve been doing that he wishes they could put aside forever. Some things he’d like to do instead too.

“I know I said I could manage all this, and I’m sorry. I really was ready to do it. It’s just that it’s different somehow.”

He frowns. She’s not making sense, but then again, he’s preoccupied, wondering about those worst-case scenarios she found. If he was alone, he'd be pulling them up on his phone too. He tries to comfort her, assure her everything is okay, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get worked up about stuff.

Whatever she's implying, there's one thing he knows for certain. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“No? At the very least, I made things more difficult than they already were. I just didn’t want you to resent me.”

He reaches up a hand, cupping her cheek and drawing her in closer. “I don’t. Don’t think that for a second. You believe me?”

Her cheek rubs against the palm of his hand, as her head bobs in answer.

“Listen, everything will be okay, and we’ll call your doctor in the morning.”

Her mouth gives a twitch. “We will?”

Her eyes dart over him with the same kind of hopeful anxiousness he feels. Seeing that openness on her face rather than her masked composure, he feels like he can finally breathe.

He doesn’t know how far he can safely reach though, without triggering her self-defense mechanisms. He hates the guys that made her like this.

“Yeah, I’ll um, I can drive you home tonight and stay on the couch, so you’re not alone. Then we’ll call, and I can go with you if your doctor wants to see you.” He wants to be there with her. Good, bad, all of it. Every time he has to say goodbye to her, instead of staying, it feels wrong. Forcing the words out, as he walks out her door, a casual goodbye, feels wrong, and he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Whatever she feels comfortable with for now, that’s what he wants. “I’ll be right there with you.”

“Jon, we literally just made out in the driveway in front of my mom and I told you I’m in love with you.”

A puff of a laugh escapes his chest.

 _God_ , it sounds so good, her saying that.

“But you want to sleep on my couch?” she says, with a poke at his shoulder. He lets the action turn his torso and frowns back at her. “That could make a girl, a pregnant girl, feel a certain way.”

“I don’t want to push.” He slides his hand over her thigh, disturbing the thin fabric. “Not for lack of interest.”

“Then I’ll push,” she says with a lift of her chin. “I could stay here. You probably have a t-shirt I could stretch out, right?”

The thought of her in one of his shirts makes his stomach flip.

“Yeah.”

“An extra toothbrush if I’m lucky,” she says, drawing her finger down the slope of his nose.

The nose she swears resembles the scan he has folded up in the bedside table.

He grits his teeth like he might bite the finger that hovers before his face, then gives a small shrug. “I think so.”

“No, wait,” she says with another poke. “I don’t love the idea of you having extra toothbrushes for visitors.”

“Just a backup, Sans.”

“Good,” she says, raking her fingers through his hair.

It sends those prickling waves up his back and neck. He rests his forehead against her thigh. As if on cue, she repeats the motion.

This is exactly the kind of thing he’s wanted. Sansa here and wanting to stay. In his bed. Sleeping alongside her.

There are logistics to consider, however. She has a special pillow at home he helped her drag home from that baby store. As big as a body—there was no way that thing was fitting in her bike basket. That’s what she usually sleeps with; it's a body, but it's different than just curling up with him.

“You’ll be comfortable here?”

“It’s not exactly a princess and the pea situation yet. Probably,” she says, ruffling his hair. “We just can’t…” Her voice shifts from that lilting tease of hers to just above a whisper. “You know.”

He lifts his head, clearing his throat. Of course they can’t, and rubbing against her like a cat, while his hand slides up her thigh is definitely moving things in the wrong direction, considering.

“Right.”

“That’s the other thing the nurse mentioned. You know,” she says, lips pursing, “just for a little bit.” Her eyes flick to the ceiling. “Which is unfortunate.”

The option is off the table, but just her implying she wishes they could makes him more than a little crazy.

He moves his hand back down her thigh, letting his fingers curl into his palm. “That’s okay. We can wait.”

She groans. “Isn’t that about all we’ve been doing?”

Yes, he’s been waiting to fuck her again, most of the time obsessed with the potential that he wouldn’t ever get the chance.

 _No big deal_.

“Sit with me,” she says with a pat to the couch cushion. “I need you to distract me today.”

“You got it.”

He braces himself on the couch’s arm and pushes up, as she tucks her feet in closer to herself, making room for him.

“How long?” she asks, as he eases himself down next to her.

“How long what?”

He grabs her feet and pulls them over his lap. Draping his arm around her bent legs, where her dress falls away, he’s left touching warm, bare skin. She really is like a pleasantly shaped furnace.

“How long had you been waiting?” she asks, as her bare toes curl into the sofa cushion.

He stalls for a second, not sure what she means, but her eyes dip down his torso and he figures he’s got the thread again.

“Sex? I haven’t slept with anyone.”

“No,” she says with a wrinkle of her nose, “I know. I mean, how long had you been wanting us to—”

“Oh.” He scuffs his hand over her leg. It’s smooth and soft. It’s just shy of a mistake touching her, because it only makes him want to touch her more. Other places. The curve of her hip. The swell of her breast. The inside of her thigh. He breathes in through his nose. “You want me to fess up about that?”

She bites the corner of her pouty pink lip, but remains expectantly silent. He squints back at her, because she looks like she could just sit there looking pretty, waiting forever for him to bare his soul.

“Guys think about that stuff. At least in passing. How about that?”

She raises one brow at him. “Will you ever tell me?”

As if he knows. Ancient history, the first time he thought about her that way and immediately dismissed it. Or as quickly as a teenager can put aside a thought like that.

“I imagine you’ll eventually get everything out of me, Sans. You have a way.”

She grins, leaning her head against the couch. “I’ll look forward to that.”

“You’re terrifying,” he says with a pinch to her arched calf.

She exhales hard enough that the swoop of hair hanging across her brow flutters. “Well, get ready then.”

“What?”

“I told my mom about us. That and about the baby being yours,” she says, resting her arm over her belly.

His gaze fixes on the movement of her hand for a long moment and then flicks back to her round-eyed stare. “Okay.”

Catelyn Stark knows.

He knows his response sounds stupid. _Okay_ —an underwhelming comeback to the day’s second bomb of a confession. But he has to sit here with that fresh reality for a second.

It sits different in his gut than the first admission.

A week ago, only he and Sansa knew the truth. That and the OB, who she decided not to lie to.

Now at least half the Starks know some version of it, and Catelyn knows everything, and knowing, she brought Sansa over here and offered to bring them dinner or something.

Is that a good sign? _Shit_.

“I should have run it by you first and made sure it was remotely okay to tell her. I just had to, considering all that was happening with me.”

Catelyn knows he knocked her daughter up. Maybe even knows they weren’t dating at the time, depending on how much Sansa decided to confide in her mother.

She has every right to tell her mother all the details, every last one. Even if that means Mrs. Stark thinks he’s trash.

“No,” he lets go of her to scuff the back of his neck. “Don’t be sorry. Christ.”

“I needed people to know she’s yours.”

His hand drops to her knee. He probably squeezes too hard. It’s hard not to, when his chest is collapsing. “You can tell everyone, honey.”

She brings her hand to her mouth, dark red nails pressed against her lips. “Just like that?”

He inhales, loosening his grip on her. “Do I want to know how it went over?”

Her fingers tap against her lips. “You’ll probably need to be on your best behavior for a while. But you don’t have to lie anymore.”

He nods slowly. That’s good. Lying was already hard. Lying once the baby arrived? That was going to be like putting his heart through a meat grinder.

Still, staying silent saved him from Catelyn’s judgment.

From Ned’s too.

The stakes there are higher. Mr. Stark is about as close to a dad as Jon’s ever had. There’s a good chance he materially damaged their relationship with what’s happened between him and Sansa, sleeping with her and being reckless. Not to mention the lying about it afterward.

“What about your dad?”

“I don’t even want to think about it. My mom is probably telling him as we speak. While angrily chopping onions or something.” Sansa groans, eyes closing. “We have to decide what we’re going to do. Is that something we want to walk into? Thanksgiving dinner? Honestly.”

“It’s up to you. I can handle it if we go.” For her sake, he tries to sound convincing. “Or I can carry you into the bedroom, so we can watch some tv and eat whatever Bran or Rickon drop off under the covers. I’m totally good either way.”

Sansa’s pink tongue pokes between her teeth. “Football?”

“I’ve got Netflix, Sans. I’m not an actual Hoosier.”

“Yeah, but guys always want to make you watch football.”

“I won’t. We don’t have to fall into all the stereotypes.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Well, if you want to go, given my emotional meltdown, everyone might give us a pass for the day. Mama mostly did. No promises though, given the crew we’re dealing with.”

She stretches out her hand, and he seizes it, hauling her upright. She sits there for a second, head angled towards him, and he stares back. He settles his hand on her back, stroking over the fall of hair that spills down her back. She adjusts herself, tucking herself in close to his side, curling up against him.

“Let’s give it thirty and then decide,” she says, her head a pleasant weight on his shoulder. “I don’t want to move or think for a while.”

“Agreed,” he says, shifting his back against the cushions to sink lower.

Just being with her without being burdened by doubt and uncertainty sounds pretty damn good. He could spend the next several months doing nothing but. Except, there are pressing details to work out and a countdown clock they only have an estimate on. An arrival that will turn life upside down. Soon, they’ll have to do some thinking and talking and repairing whatever damage they’ve done to the relationships around them, unless they want to usher in life with their own in complete chaos.

“Although, if we’re telling the truth, I should tell you one more thing. I did something awful before any of this,” she says, wiggling her finger between the two of them. “When you and Dany were together,” she says, and at the naming of his ex, his head cocks in surprise.

That's a name he wasn't expecting to hear.

“What now?”

“She asked me to keep away from you. Like she called me and asked me to back off. And I didn’t. I did the opposite.”

He tries to pull back to better assess what the hell she's on about, but she follows his body, burying her face in his chest and bunching his waffle knit shirt in one fist. 

He knew Dany was jealous of Sansa—of Sansa and Arya and his closeness or fondness for them. Something bothered her about Sansa in particular. It all came out there at the end, and he dismissed it as craziness on her part. Unfairly, because yeah, he wasn’t ever going to do anything about it, but there was a latent interest there on his part.

He’s shocked Dany would say something like that to Sansa though. Is it something he needs to apologize for? His ex making Sansa uncomfortable? Did she really call Sansa up? It sounds messy and embarrassing.

“What are you talking about?” he tries again.

“She told me to back off, so you guys would have a chance,” she says, slightly pulling back, only to immediately rebury her head, when she finishes, “and then I asked you to be my ride to craft shows instead.”

The craft shows. Her needing a ride. Spending weekends together. All on the heels of Dany telling Sansa to keep away.

He laughs, a deep, chest inverting laugh, and grabs her by both shoulders, rocking her back to look at her screwed up face. 

“Don’t laugh. It’s awful,” she says, pushing against his chest. “I’m an awful person.”

That only makes him laugh again.

He drags her in and kisses her head. “Sansa Stark, were you seducing me?” he asks against her brow.

“You think I’m joking,” she says with another push to his chest, “but I think it’s why I kept asking you to be my date to things, like company events too.”

He nudges her hairline with his nose. “You think?”

“I’m not totally sure. I thought you were a nice guy and cute.”

“Cute?”

“Yeah. Hot. Whatever. Fun to flirt with? I liked how it made me feel.”

“How’d it make you feel, honey?” he asks, transfixed by her tongue darting out to wet her lips.

“Stop. I mean it. It’s bad!” she says, starting to giggle and then stopping herself with a comically stern look. “I didn’t like her telling me to stay away from you, when she was your girlfriend and totally had the right of it.”

Every piece of information she shares makes the corner of his mouth turn up more. He's grinning like a total fool.

“Tell me more. This sounds good.”

Her pushes turn to a playful slap. “Stop.”

“Hey, if that’s really the case, I felt the same way about you.”

Her nose wrinkles.

“Hand to God, I just about had worked up the nerve to ask you out on a real date, when you asked me through the window of my truck to be your sperm donor.”

He’d still been wrestling with whether it was legitimately a good idea, whether it was a disaster in the making, asking his best friend’s sister out, but he wanted to. Even if he assumed his interest in her outweighed whatever interest she could possibly have in him.

She presses her hands against her eyes and then peaks through the gaps in her fingers. “No, really?”

“Swear.”

Her hands frame her cheeks, as she rolls her eyes heavenward. “Well, shoot. I would have liked that.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, I’m not an idiot. Just a homewrecker.”

Her smile could be hiding something real. He's not sure. Just in case, he wants to reassure her she has no reason to feel bad.

He jostles her shoulders. “No homes were wrecked. Dany wasn’t—”

“What?” she prompts, when he fails to grasp exactly what was missing there and settles on frowning.

But the answer is right here.

“She wasn’t it, Sans. She wasn’t you. You. The baby. You’re what I want.”

Reaching across herself, she peels his hand from her shoulder and places it on her belly. They look down together, as he splays his fingers wide over the firm rise.

The baby isn't moving but that doesn't matter. He knows she's in there, just beneath his hand. _His baby_.

He doesn’t have to lie anymore. He can be the father he never had.

His heart is in his throat, when she asks, “You really think everything’s okay with the baby?”

“Yeah. Nothing is wrong. It’s fine, honey.”

It’s got to be.

“You're a very good distraction, Jon.”

He looks up from his hand smoothing over her and what he sees there in her face is too raw. “Let me be there for you and the baby. I promise we’ll work the rest out.”

“It’s a lot.”

“That’s okay.”


	16. Epilogue

Jon closes the door behind him, squinting one eye shut, as he attempts to get it to latch without making a sound. The house is dark, which makes him think Sansa took advantage of the fact that Sara had fallen asleep towards the end of the party and went to bed herself. Which renders the iced coffee he’d picked up at Kate’s Coffee after dropping his mother off at home useless, but that’s okay—she needs the rest.

Sara is going through a sleep regression. Just in time for her Christening. Mrs. Stark says it was too easy, the way Sara slept through the night by the time she was six weeks, and she’d know, having raised five kids.

Sansa wants a big family and usually he thinks he’s game. Actually, the idea makes Jon wants to pull her in to his chest and kiss her until she’s breathless. Except when Sara was chain feeding right after they brought her home. Or last night at 3 am, when he was whispering in her tiny ear that her mama was nervous about hosting a party and could she consider sleeping for just a couple hours. Then he thinks maybe first they should just figure out how to get this one to sleep before they consider attempting Stark level parenting.

Eventually Sara slept though, and he should have gone to sleep too, on the floor by her crib if necessary, but instead, he stood there in the dark, watching her for a while. Because she might be four months, but the sense of amazement hasn’t worn off. He’s amazed that she’s his. Today he held her in front of God and everyone else, while she was baptized and he didn’t have to stand in as a godparent or ‘Uncle’ Jon or whatever arrangement he was dreading at one point not so long ago.

Balancing so the coffee doesn’t spill out the top where the straw punctures the plastic lid, he toes his shoes off, stepping on the back of the heels to pull them off without bending down.

He’ll put the coffee in the frig. It’ll keep a while, he figures, padding towards the kitchen in his dress socks. Sansa dressed him today. Bought him new socks and new shoes too. Robb teased him about his makeover, but it’s her way of taking care of him just as much as her baking is. It’s not that he doesn’t mind, her pulling a sweater she wants him to wear from the closet or ordering him a new winter coat on her laptop, while using her pregnant belly as a table for her bowl of ice cream. He likes it. He has never been a preppy kind of guy, but the pocket square she embroidered with his monograms is one of the best gifts he’s ever gotten.

He pulls the frig door open and slides the coffee into the empty space next to the wrapped-up leftovers from the party. The Starks paid for the catering—insisted on it as their gift. Jon thinks Mrs. Stark might have been the one to wipe down the kitchen too, because it didn’t look this good, when he was leaving with his mom.

So long as Sansa is happy, the Starks are happy, all the weirdness behind them. Mostly. There are moments—like when he puts his hand low on Sansa’s back and she leans into him—when one of them will look wide-eyed their way, and he realizes it’s still jarring, this shift in who they all are to each other. But it’s better. Everyone is trying.

The frig door closes, leaving the kitchen in the shadowed light of the late afternoon, as he tugs on his wedding ring to drop it in the ring dish Sansa put by the sink. He turns the faucet on with a nudge of his elbow. Since Sara arrived, he’s obsessive about washing his hands, and no shoes in the house either because of germs. Not that she’s crawling. That hasn’t stopped him from being careful. Before she even was born, he baby-proofed the house. As soon as he proposed and Sansa said she wanted them to live in his house rather than move in together in Clayton or somewhere new, he threw himself into making everything right here.

Sansa set to putting her stamp on the place too. He likes that too.

He grabs an empty cup and fills it up, dumping the contents into the hanging plant that curls down over the sink. It’s beginning to crawl along the top of the cabinets too. He was worried, when Sansa moved all them all in that she was sticking them places they wouldn’t get enough light, but she swore they’d be happy, she knew what she was doing. Plants are like people: some of them look tough and are total babies and others are much tougher than they look. She was right.

Right about the plants, about where to put her pillows, about changing the curtains in the bedroom. Though his concern that she would hate everything about his house or his furniture didn’t come to pass, the changes to his place considerably less substantial than that. Her impeccable eye has improved the place. She was certainly right about the large-scale floral wallpaper in the nursery, he thinks, pushing Sara’s door open with his knuckle, just an inch more, so he can peek inside. It looks as good here as it would have in Sansa’s condo.

It feels more like home now, his house, but that might have to do with Sara and Sansa more so than any adjustments his wife made to the space.

He helped move Sansa into her place and was happy to help. The same way he was happy to help move any of the Starks into dorm rooms he’d never get the chance to experience and apartments nicer than anything he could hope to afford. But he was much happier moving her out, including disassembling that crib only to reassemble it hours later for a little person they had yet to meet.

The sound machine softly droning on her dresser drowns out the sound of Sara’s breathing. He could creep across the room to watch her chest rise and fall, but Sansa wouldn’t be thrilled if he accidentally woke her. Besides, he could use a nap too.

Entertaining isn’t his thing, but entertaining on the heels of being up and down with a baby half the night is something he’d rather not attempt again any time soon.

He loops a finger around the doorknob and pulls it back closed. The door doesn’t squeal, and he rocks back without making the floor creak either.

He’s less successful sneaking into their bedroom. Sansa’s head lifts from the pillow before he ever opens the door wide, blinking at him in drowsy confusion.

“Sorry,” he mouths, hoping as he closes the door with a soft snick that she might just roll onto the other side and fall back asleep.

Instead, she stretches her arms over her head, as he undoes his belt buckle and his pants, and gives him a bleary smile. He kicks free of them, while she watches him with a hooded gaze. He raises his brows, as he starts unbuttoning his shirt from the button up. “Enjoying the show?”

She hums, nodding.

Shrugging out of his shirt, he grins back at her. “Good news: there’s a second showing tonight. Nine on the dot.”

She groans, as he sinks down onto the bed. “Let’s make it eight-thirty and really live it up.”

“You got it,” he says, sighing at the relief of the pillow under his head.

It’s not a joke: nothing sounds better than getting to bed earlier.

Almost nothing, he thinks, as she scoots into side and hooks her leg over him with a satisfied sound. She drapes an arm over him and tucks her cheek into his chest. She’s warm from being under the covers. Just having her curled into his side is something he doesn’t think he could ever get enough of, but the rest of it is pretty fucking great.

“Sorry,” he says again, burying a hand in her hair. “I was trying to be quiet. Sara’s still asleep.”

“Good. She was good today, right?”

“Perfect.”

She nudges the skin on his shoulder with a brush of her nose. “I still remember how Rickon screamed. Through the whole service.”

“How many Starks have been baptized in that gown?”

“Ummm… Ten? I think that’s what Mama said. She looked pretty in it, didn’t she?”

“Beautiful.”

People say she looks like both of them—a good mix, just one of those things people say to parents. Jon always correct them: she looks just like Sansa. Except for the dark hair. Maybe the nose. She’s beautiful and perfect and even when she’s keeping them up, he thinks there’s never been a better baby. All her mother’s doing without a doubt.

He’ll gladly have three more just like her if that’s what Sansa wants.

She props herself up enough on his chest to look him in the eye. Those pretty blue eyes light on his lips and then back up, making his mouth quirk up.

“You think your mom was okay today? She didn’t feel weird or anything?”

He strokes his hand over the back of her head. “Yeah, she was good.”

It was their first big family thing, and it went pretty well.

Her finger dips into the hollow of his neck. “You’d tell me if she said something in the car?”

“Yeah, course I would. She was fine, honey.”

Her finger taps against him. “Okay.”

“Everyone was on their best behavior, don’t you think?”

“They should be. There’s no reason we can’t all be together and not have it be awkward,” she says with Sansa-like conviction.

If anyone can will family get-togethers to be free of tension between the older members, it’s Sansa. In general, it’s better to get on board or get out of her way, once she has a goal in mind.

Like making her Etsy business be her fulltime gig. Her last day of working for Margaery was the week before Sara’s due date, and while it’s not easy to get anything done with a newborn, she’s made it work. They’ve got a system. One of them watches Sara, while the other works. Mrs. Stark finds herself randomly over here with offers to take the baby off their hands too.

Sara helps smooth out the tension too. It’s hard to act petty when sharing a grandbaby.

“I didn’t realize you’d be asleep. I brought you an iced coffee after I dropped my mom off.”

She presses her finger to his mouth. “You’re the actual best.”

He nips her finger, letting his teeth graze the skin, until she pulls it back and rocks up higher on his chest, bringing them nose to nose. The drag of her limbs and her body against him makes his chest give a heave. She's not just warm and soft. She smells good too. Like the herb infused lotion she started using at the end of her pregnancy. He'd help her put it on, and when she uses it now, it triggers some weird part of his brain, the part that really liked her being pregnant.

He exhales.

“I stuck it in the frig for you, so you can have it when you get up.”

She nudges his nose with hers, voice quiet and breathy. “I’m awake.”

He swallows. He was tired. Exhausted. Just a few minutes ago.

But there’s no way she isn’t tired after a day like this and a night like last night. He should let her rest. He should rest. They should sleep. The baby books tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps, and considering theirs is going through a regression, it's probably still good advice.

“It’ll keep.”

“No, I mean, I’m _awake_ , awake,” she says hand snaking down his body.

“ _Awake_ , awake,” he repeats back, giving her nose a similar bump, as her hand finds him beneath the sheets over his boxers.

She bites the corner of her lip and tilts her head, considering him.

He’d like to bite that lip for her.

“I’ve been wanting to get you alone since you handled Aunt Lysa for me.”

Sansa’s aunt is a complainer. Professional level. When she started in, the matching looks on Mrs. Stark and Sansa’s face seemed to indicate a removal from the scene was for the best. So, he wheeled her out of the room, offering to get her a glass of champagne before anyone else got back from the church. Treated her like the honored guest and awkwardly made chit-chat for a couple of minutes in the kitchen. She got to complain to him about the air conditioning in the church and how Cat always picks the worst caterers and that her sister ought to have made her the godmother to her kids and she’ll never forgive her for it. Nodded in the right parts and mmhmm’ed his way through it. All just to get it out of her system.

Hardly knight in shining armor stuff.

“Is that right?”

“Yep. Very sexy.”

He scuffs his hand down her back, rucking up the camisole she must have thrown on, after changing out of her dress. It was church appropriate. Little blue flowers and cap sleeves and a skirt that swayed against her calves. Not the kind of thing that should have been a turn on, but then, whatever she wears, Jon can't stop looking at her.

“Well, I would have started running interference on your aunt a long time ago if I’d known that was the ticket.”

“A long time ago, huh?”

“I’m not stupid,” he says, brows furrowing as her fingers slip beneath the elastic band and heated flesh meets her touch.

Sansa was too good for him. Off limits for a host of reasons. The last girl who would have looked his way. Until suddenly, she did with a flutter of lashes and a slow stroke of her fingers down the length of his arm.

He's been sunk ever since.

It might have been an accident that got them to this point, but it wasn't a mistake. It's too good to have been a mistake.

“Just how long ago would that have been?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you after I fuck you, hmm?”

The tip of her tongue kisses the edge of her teeth, as a smile he feels straight in the chest pulls at her mouth. “Deal.”


End file.
